Kith and Kin
by Lydia Hunter
Summary: Every family grows and changes over the years: loved ones leave and come back, there are births and deaths and marriages. This is the story of the Cannon and Montoya families, from just after the final season to about twenty years later.
1. The Strays

KITH AND KIN

By Lydia Hunter

 **Author's Note:** _This is a work in progress, though it is actually_ making _progress. (Slowly.) It's already the longest thing I've ever written, and it's going to be much, much longer – approximately 2_ _5_ _chapters when it's finished. The story is divided into different sections, each one focusing on a different main character and a time of major change or conflict. The first section, obviously, is John and Victoria. Blue's section begins with chapter 5,_ _then Mano's, then Buck's_ _, etc._

 _A friendly word of warning: I'm going with the 1866 timeline, from the episodes The Badge and The Last Hundred Miles. Believe me, I'm very well aware of how unpopular this is, so_ PLEASE _don't helpfully "correct" me just because I'm using a different fanon from the accepted one. I already know it's fannish high treason.  
_

BOOK ONE:

"THE STRAYS"

(Victoria and John – 1877)

Chapter One

"The Strays"

"What's the tally now, Buck?" Sam asked as he caught up with the other two.

Buck Cannon tucked the pencil stub into his hatband and gave a cursory glance at the list in his hand. "Still make it we're down sixteen," he said, sticking the list in his shirt pocket. "Mebbe we got time to find a few of 'em this afternoon."

Sam nodded. "Hope so. I'll head north from here. Wind, you ride west a ways, see if you spot any more strays. We'll go ahead and finish the circuit, then we'll meet up in the middle for some grub in a little while."

They were more than halfway to Tucson, nearing the northern edge of the property. Buck rode off in the same general direction as Wind at first, aiming to split and move farther northwest in a little while. He'd be in the middle of the line before either of the others.

Before they'd gone very far at all, the boy pulled up abruptly, half-standing in his stirrups with a look of intense concentration on his face. He held up one hand, either to get Buck's attention or to ensure his silence. Buck rode over to him. "What's got you all—" he began, but Wind shushed him.

"Can't you hear it?" he said in a very quiet voice.

"Hear what?"

"I heard a baby crying."

"A _baby?"_ said Buck in disbelief.

"That's right, a baby. Sshh, listen – there it is again."

Buck listened, but couldn't hear anything out of the ordinary. "Coyote. Or just your imagination, more like." Just then, the wind shifted and he heard the same distant wails that the boy's slightly keener hearing had picked up. "Now what in tarnation would somebody be doin' with a baby out here in the middle of nowhere?"

He had a few ideas, and he didn't like them much. Every one of 'em concerned Apaches and the problems they were stirring up for the territory lately. The least troubling theory was that maybe it was a harmless group of Apache womenfolk making their way to a new settlement. The most troubling … well, no matter how many years had passed, Buck still hadn't forgotten the cries of those poor little Ward kids being carried off by the same people who had just massacred the rest of their family. And to the end of his days he knew he'd never forget about those two little girls he and Mano had rescued, after they'd been kept as slaves.

Wind interrupted his thoughts, not necessarily a bad thing in this case. "We should check it out."

"We will, but I'm gonna go find Sam first. If there's trouble, I want him with us. You stay right here and wait'll we get back. And keep your eyes open, boy, whatever you do."

Of course the boy was nowhere to be seen by the time Buck and Sam got there. Neither one of them was particularly surprised by that, since Wind tended to know everything and act on his own initiative no matter what anybody else had to say about it. And ninety-nine times out of a hundred, he'd come up smelling like roses. It was that hundredth time, when he'd make a wrong call and end up covered in muck instead, that made Buck actually forgive him for all the times he was right.

Following his tracks, a few minutes' ride brought them to a clearing at the base of a hill. By the shelter of the sheer rocks sat a lone covered wagon, its horses unhitched and tied to a rope nearby. A cow was tied to the back of the wagon, her calf loose but staying close to its mother. They looked at one another and rode in closer.

Behind the wagon, a man lay face down on the ground, his outstretched fingertips just touching the handle of a shovel. Sam was off his horse and at the man's side checking him over almost immediately.

Buck, eyeing the shovel and the beginnings of a familiar-looking hole in the ground, asked, "What was he doin', diggin' his own grave?" in that sardonic way that had become a habit of his the last couple of years.

Wind poked his head out from the flaps of the wagon cover. "No, his wife's," he said. "She's in here, all wrapped up to be buried."

"This poor fella looks like he's about starved to death himself," Sam said. "Still passed out cold."

"Measles," said Wind. "There's a couple of kids in the wagon in about the same shape. The baby went back to sleep, but the other one's sitting in the corner staring at her mother's body."

Buck, who had always had a soft spot for kids, went over and lifted up the flap. Gently he called to the little girl. "Hey. Hey, li'l bit. Why don't you come over here. We won't hurt ya. You ain't got nothin' to be scared of. We gonna take good care of your pa, and get your ma buried good and proper." She lifted her head and looked at him, but wouldn't move from her corner. In the dim interior, he could only just make out a pair of big eyes, and light hair that hadn't been brushed in a good while.

He turned to the others and said, "We better get him and these kids back to the house soon's we can." Technically, Tucson and the doctor were a little closer, but home was the better option. There was no hospital for the young man, no place for the kids to stay, and no guarantee of finding the doctor in. Tucson, like most of the eastern part of the territory, was still in the middle of a measles epidemic and the town's only doctor was run off his feet. At the ranch, they'd already gone through the outbreak with little difficulty. There was Blue's room, still standing empty after well over a year, and there was Victoria, ready to administer tender loving care to anyone who needed it, especially children.

"Yeah," agreed Sam. "You two take care of that. I'll stay here and finish burying his wife, then I'll go on into town and see if the doctor can come out."

The three of them got down to work. Buck hitched up the team to the wagon, untied the cow, noticing as he did so that she was wearing the HC brand, and tied his own horse, Rebel, to the back of the wagon. Sam picked up the shovel and set about enlarging the grave that the man had started digging, while Wind moved the body of the unfortunate young mother out of the wagon and under the blanket shade he'd set up to keep her husband from getting sunstroke. Once or twice the young man opened his eyes and made sounds like he was trying to talk, but almost immediately lapsed into unconsciousness again. He was certainly in no shape to make it to the wagon under his own power so Buck and Wind lifted him up between their shoulders and half-walked, half-dragged him.

As his limp form was hoisted into the wagon box, the baby woke and began to cry again. As soon as he had the patient settled comfortably on the pallet they'd been using as a makeshift bed on their journey, Buck crawled over on his knees and picked up the squalling infant. He sat back and bounced it up and down, making cooing noises at it. In between the cooing noises, he said anything he could think of to comfort the little girl, who finally at least made momentary eye contact with him even if she didn't smile. Mostly she just stared at her father, as if worried that he was in the same shape as her mother.

"Nah," Buck told her. "He'll be all right. We gonna get him some help." When the baby finally stopped wailing he settled it in the cushioned box that was its bed and got to his knees again. "Now, I gotta get up front so I can drive this here wagon home, so I can't stay back here with ya. So you stay right here and take good care o' your daddy and your li'l brother. Sister? Well, one or the other. All right? You be a good girl and look after 'em, Sis, and we'll be home 'fore you know it."

He climbed out and walked over to join the others. "Sam, we be goin' now. Sooner we get him back to Chaparral the better."

Down inside the grave, Sam paused for a breather, sweat running down his face. He didn't bother to speak, just leaned against his shovel and nodded at him.

As he turned to go, Buck stopped to take a look at the makeshift sun shade. It was a simple affair, just a slightly threadbare blanket suspended over the back of a wooden chair on one end, and across two sticks driven into the ground on the other. He nodded at it. "You do that?" he asked Wind.

The boy met his eyes. "Yeah," he answered simply, neither asking for nor receiving his praise.

Sam, though, was more forthcoming. "Good thinkin', Wind. Sure gets the job done."

"Thanks, Sam," he replied, and climbed on his horse. He followed the wagon as it bounced slowly to the south, herding the cow and calf along in front of him.

* * *

Victoria, busy in the kitchen, didn't hear the wagon drive up in front of the door. The first hint she had that anything was amiss was when her brother-in-law suddenly appeared in the kitchen door, calling her name softly. "Victoria?"

"Yes, Buck?" She turned around to see what he wanted, and her eyes widened at the sight of him.

In the crook of his left arm he carried a baby, and a tousle-haired girl of about two or so was balanced on his right hip. He didn't say another word, but everything in his expression said, _"Help."_

She reacted just the way he'd expected, throwing one hand up to her mouth and exclaiming, _"Madre de dios!"_ and hurrying over to take the baby from him. Gratefully, Buck shifted his remaining burden onto his chest where he could use both arms to support the girl.

Victoria looked at the fading red marks on the baby's face, and moved in close to examine the older sister's. _"Sarampión,"_ she sighed. "Oh, the poor little _niños_. Where are their parents?"

"Well, their mama's dead, and their pa's not in too good a shape, either. Joe and Wind's gettin' him up to Blue's room. Sam's headed into town to see if he can get the doctor."

"I'll see to him just as soon as I get these children fed. And changed." She indicated the adult-sized red undershirt that was tied haphazardly around the baby's waist as a makeshift diaper. "Buck, look at this. Why did you do this?"

"Well, Victoria, it was all I could find. I didn't have time to look through the whole wagon…" He trailed off, seeing she wasn't going to listen to him anyway. She continued to lecture him as she bustled about the kitchen. It was an awful lot of words to say something that just boiled down to, "Men are useless."

She put a piece of bread into a bowl of milk to soak along with a spoonful of sugar, sliced an apple for the older child, and grabbed a clean dishtowel to use as a diaper. Shoving the bread and milk at Buck, she said, "Come with me," and hurried upstairs to her room. There, she quickly cleaned and changed the baby and sat down on the bed to spoon feed him the bread mixture. When she felt calmer, she tried talking to the little girl. "What's your name, _preciosa_? Hmm? Will you tell me your name?" The child looked up at her briefly, then turned her attention back to her apple slices without uttering a word.

"She don't talk much," Buck said. "I just call her Li'l Bit. Cute little ol' thing, ain't she?"

Victoria gazed at both the children in turn, her eyes soft. "Oh, yes, she is," she agreed. "They both are."

* * *

The children's father seemed to be in less danger than they'd originally feared. He was exhausted and weak, but his fever was low and he drifted in and out of consciousness. Once, he woke up enough to notice Victoria sitting by his bedside. "Ma'am?" he said. "…children?" His voice was scratchy and he could barely get the words out.

"Asleep in the next room," she reassured him. He gave a weak nod, apparently satisfied, and drifted off again.

Eventually she left her patient for the little time it took her to finish her meal preparations. She ate a small, hurried meal in her bedroom with the girl, then fed the baby some pureed meat and put him back to bed in his box that Buck had carried inside. Like their father, the two children were still weak and out of sorts after their recent illness, but they were at least definitely on the mend. For the rest of the evening she went back and forth between the children in her room and their father in Blue's.

That was where Sam found her, fast asleep in the chair. For an instant he considered tiptoeing away again and letting her rest, but he knew better than to try it. For all her sweetness, Victoria Cannon could be just about as formidable as her husband, and a man would be a fool to deliberately cross either one of them. "Mrs. Cannon?" he said, tapping softly on the open door.

Victoria roused from her light slumber. "Oh, Sam. Did you find the doctor?"

"Yes, ma'am, I found him, but he won't be able to make it out here until tomorrow at the earliest. Maybe the next day if he gets any sleep." He nodded towards the bed. "How is he?"

"Out of danger, I think, but he's still very weak."

"Well, at least that's somethin'. And the kids?"

"The children need only food and rest and fresh milk."

Sam breathed a sigh of genuine relief. "That reminds me, Mrs. Cannon. I stopped at the general store and had them grind up a sack of barley to feed the baby. I figured between that and all the oats we've got around here, oughtta be in good shape. Oh, and a baby bottle."

"Thank you, Sam," she said, and gave him such a warm smile that any other man would have blushed. He was used to her, though, and just smiled back.

"No problem." He started out the door, then stopped and turned back. "Oh, would you like me to send up one of the men to sit with him tonight so you can get some rest?"

Victoria shook her head. "No, I don't think so, Sam. If I need help, I will call my brother."

* * *

Some time just before dawn she came back from checking on the children to find him awake and looking around curiously.

Victoria hurried over to his bedside and reached out to feel his forehead. He flinched away from her hand, but not before she noticed that he was much cooler. "How are you feeling?" she asked him.

"Depends. Was any of this a bad dream? My wife?"

"I'm sorry," said Victoria. "I'm afraid it is true."

He closed his eyes again and clenched his fists for a moment. Then he got hold of himself and asked, "Where are we?"

"You're at our ranch, the High Chaparral."

"Oh. Well, that's one thing. They told me in Tucson to go to the High Chaparral and talk to a man named Big John Cannon. That he always needs men to work for him. Not that I'd be much use right now," he added. The exertion of talking was sapping his strength, and his voice got noticeably weaker with every sentence.

"That's of no importance right now," Victoria said. "You must rest and recover your strength. My husband always needs men to run his ranch, but first you must think of yourself and your children. John will talk to you in two or three days when he returns from talking with the army men. Now, you lie back and rest, and I will bring you some broth."

She turned to leave, but he stopped her. "Ma'am? Could I see the kids?"

"As soon as they're awake. I promise." Victoria watched for another moment, wondering if he would insist, but he seemed satisfied and closed his eyes again.

By the middle of the morning the broth and the sleep had worked their magic and the young man had the strength to ask for breakfast and to see his children. His little girl, who hadn't uttered a sound in front of anyone since they'd been found the day before, burst into tears and ran to her father as soon as she saw him. She climbed onto the bed and threw her arms around him. He held her tenderly and rocked her back and forth, crooning, "Daisy. Daisy, don't cry, my little one. Daddy's here."

Victoria stood back, holding the baby, and watched the touching scene with a bittersweet smile on her face. She said nothing, not wanting to intrude.

Eventually he looked up and held out one arm towards the baby. "Ma'am, can I…?"

"Of course," she said. "Here he is. Will you be all right while I make breakfast for you?"

He nodded. "We'll be fine. And thanks," he said, seeing that she understood his need to have his family to himself for a little while.

In no time she was back with a small plate of eggs and biscuits, which he ate rather awkwardly with one hand, the plate balanced on his knees. His other arm was still wrapped around his daughter, who clung to him possessively. Victoria pulled the chair up next to the bed and took the baby into her lap, rocking him until he fell asleep.

Between bites the man told her a little of his story. His name was Ben Galbraith, he said, and he and his family had started out west to join his older brother in California.

"We're both builders by trade," he said. "Frank's managed to start up his own business, but he's been kind of snowed under. He says sometimes he gets jobs he can't handle because he doesn't have enough help, but not often enough so that he can afford to hire enough full-time help. So he has to depend on day-jobbers, and they may show up or may not. So we both figured if I moved out there I could help him, and Rita could help his wife with the children. 'Course now…" His voice cracked, but he got hold of himself quickly. "Sorry, ma'am."

"I understand," said Victoria. "But why were you headed to the High Chaparral, and by yourselves?"

Ben looked embarrassed. "Run short of money," he admitted. "And food. We run into some bad weather up in the prairies, kept havin' to detour south. Didn't count on that, or allow for any extra, just what we thought we'd need on the trip out. Nothin' to do but leave the wagon train and stop in Tucson for awhile so I could look for work. Nobody seems to be hiring builders or glaziers, though. I did a few odd jobs; managed to pick up a few dollars putting in a window in a saloon."

"Yes, I understand they break those very frequently," she said. "Sometimes by throwing my brother-in-law through them."

He gave a weak laugh. "Well, they didn't say who got thrown through it, ma'am. All they said was that a ranch called the High Chaparral was always looking for hands, and that Mrs. – that you'd probably be glad to have the family around for awhile. By that time the kids had come down with the measles, and we spent the last bit of money we had for the doctor. So I talked it over with my wife, and we decided I should take one of the horses and ride out here to talk to your husband while she stayed there in the wagon and looked after the kids. Only I came down with it pretty bad, too, and was laid up for a few days."

Ben fell silent for awhile, but Victoria didn't push for more information. He was still weak and he would tell her when he was ready. She thought she probably knew the next part of the story, though, and it would be hard for him to tell it. "I'll take the baby back to my room and put him to bed," she said, getting to her feet with the sleeping infant. The little girl glared at her. "Don't worry, Daisy. Your brother is only going in the next room. You'll see him in a little while."

"Sorry about that. I don't know why she's so clingy. Well, I guess I do, at that."

When she came back he was ready to talk. "Rita was … well, she had the looking after of all of us. Ran herself ragged. So when she took sick you can guess what happened. I was on the mend by then, and the children were, but we were pretty well out of food, so I decided we'd start out this way and, well, ask for help," he said, embarrassed. "Everything we'd heard… Well, anyway, we made it about halfway and Rita, she … she was complainin' about her head hurting. The motion made it hurt more, she said. So we stopped for the night so she could rest. And in the morning I woke up and she was gone."

Ben squeezed his eyes shut and hugged his daughter so fiercely that she squirmed in his embrace.

Victoria reached out a tender hand and touched his shoulder. Her eyes brimmed with tears of sympathy. "I'm very sorry," she said.

He looked up at her with reddened eyes. "Thank you. I don't really know what happened after that, Mrs. Cannon. Do you?"

"My brother-in-law, Buck, and some of the men found you and brought you home. Sam stayed behind and buried your wife."

"Then I owe them all a great debt. And you as well, for taking us in like this."

Victoria shook her head. "No. You and the children are welcome to stay as long as you need. And my husband will find a job for you when you are recovered."

* * *

John glanced around the homestead with a familiar eye as he rode in, taking in the activity level, gauging the mood of the place. Busy, but reasonably quiet. Normal. Just what he always hoped to see after he'd been away from home for awhile. One or two of the men waved at him as they went about their work, but they seemed to be the only ones around. He'd halfway expected Victoria to run out into the yard to meet him as she often did, but there was no sign of her. Well, he'd see her soon enough. Might as well go ahead and take care of the horse, he thought, and headed for the barn.

He'd barely had time to take the saddle and blanket off before Joe was at his side, offering to take over. John threw his saddlebags over his shoulder and stepped away. He walked over to investigate the covered wagon parked in one corner of the barn, drawing back one corner of the tarp to look inside at what must have been a good portion of somebody's worldly goods.

"Joe? What's all this about? Who does this wagon belong to?"

"Sick family, name of Galbraith. Some of Buck's strays. He brought 'em in a couple days ago."

"Sick?" John said. "Measles?"

Joe nodded. "What else?"

"Yeah. I heard there's a whole wagon train stopped thirty, forty miles northwest of Tucson. All of 'em down with it. Same bunch, you think?"

"Probably. I haven't really met these people yet, but it sounds like they got hit pretty hard. Man's wife died from it. What I heard, Sam and Buck got to him and the kids just in time."

"Oh." John took in the information, then clapped him on the shoulder and said, "Well, thanks, Joe. I better go on in and see how Mrs. Cannon's coping."

He was about halfway across the yard when she came out of the house. She carried a baby perched on one hip, leaving one arm free to wave at her husband. John smiled and hastened his step.

"Hello, dear," he said as he stepped onto the porch. He touched her shoulder, and leaned in to give her a quick peck on the lips. "Who's your guest, here?"

"His name is Johnny. His father and sister are upstairs. They're staying here with us for awhile. You don't mind that very much, do you, John?"

He laughed. "Now, Victoria, how often do I ever get the chance to object to people you take in?"

"John…" she warned him, lips pursed, standing with her free hand on her hip.

"All right. Why don't you introduce me and I'll find out if I mind them being here or not. And _then_ you can overrule me."

* * *

Ben Galbraith looked worlds better after two days' recuperation and a good clean up. His freshly washed hair gleamed gold in the sunlight from the window, and the close shave exposed a strong, square jaw and a wide, full-lipped mouth. There was still a certain haunted look in his blue eyes, but they were bright and clear now, lacking any trace of the fever.

He got to his feet quickly as Big John entered the room. "Nice to meet you, Mr. Cannon," he said when Victoria introduced them.

John gave a polite nod. "Galbraith," he said.

Being a little under six feet himself, Ben had to look up to meet the man's eyes as they shook hands. He was an imposing sight, and he certainly lived up to his nickname. Daisy, who sat on the floor playing with her doll, looked up wide-eyed at the massive stranger. "My daughter," Ben said briefly.

John glanced over at the child and gave a sort of awkward grimace that he meant for a smile. He'd never been entirely comfortable around small children. He pulled the chair away from the bed and sat down, motioning for Ben to have a seat.

Victoria, attempting to give the men time alone to talk, said, "Daisy, I think it's time to give the baby another bottle. Would you come and help me?"

She thought it over, then climbed up on the bed and nestled up next to her father. "Mm mmm," she said, shaking her head.

"No, Daisy," Ben said. "You go on and help Missie while I talk to Mr. Cannon." She pouted for a second, then did as he asked.

" _Missie..?"_ John, amused, turned around to look at his wife.

Victoria gave a dignified sniff. "She can't pronounce Mrs. Cannon," she said, and swept out of the room with both children in tow.

"I think she probably can, she just doesn't want to. Stubborn little cuss."

John snorted. "Yeah, well, she may be, but 'Missie' there can out-stubborn her, believe you me." He looked over just in time to see a fleeting look of amusement on Ben's face. "But then you've probably noticed that."

"I think Mrs. Cannon is a very kind woman," Ben replied diplomatically. "I've tried to apologise for imposing on her, but…" He broke off with a shrug.

"Yeah. Well, I wouldn't worry about it. You're far from the first strays my wife has taken in. As you say, she's a kind woman. I would like to know how you happen to be here under her care, though."

* * *

That night was the first time Ben felt up to joining the others downstairs for dinner. They tried to draw him into the conversation, but he still lacked the energy to join in with any great enthusiasm.

Instead, he sat at the table next to Buck, watching his hosts. They were, individually and as a family, quite unlike anyone he'd ever encountered before. Mrs. Cannon dressed up for dinner, her brother and husband obviously cleaned up but wore their everyday clothes, and Buck ate with his gloves on. Ben, who had nothing better to put on than the least worn of his work clothes, felt perfectly comfortable being part of the gathering.

The Cannons were quite well known in the territory; he'd heard the name even before crossing the New Mexico/Arizona border, and there had been plenty said in his hearing during the days spent odd-jobbing in Tucson. Opinions varied from strongly negative to something near hero-worship. It was interesting to compare and contrast what he'd heard with what he had observed for himself.

Buck and Manolito had been described to him as a couple of ne'er do well saddle tramps, pleasant drinking companions and gamblers who could sometimes show a dangerous side. Good company, both of them, but best to watch out for your womenfolk. He'd actually seen them briefly while cutting window glass in a saloon, little thinking Buck would come to save his life a week later.

He'd heard little of Mrs. Cannon in town, save that she was a good, kind woman who was always willing to help out someone in need, especially if there were children involved. Rita had passed on a few things she'd picked up from various women in Tucson, mostly more tales of her generosity and lots of pity over the fact she'd never had children of her own. Out of the whole bunch, she was the only one who'd never had a single bad word said about her. Ben was glad about that. After only a couple of days in her care, his hero worship was so great that he might just take on anyone who said anything uncomplimentary.

John Cannon, naturally enough, came in for the lion's share of scrutiny, positive and negative. You couldn't go a day in Tucson without hearing the name. The High Chaparral was the biggest ranch in Arizona and its owner was unquestionably one of the most powerful men in the territory. It was inevitable that he would have his detractors and supporters. In three or four days, Ben had heard the man described variously as both kindhearted and cold, scrupulous and unscrupulous, generous or "willing to sell his grandmother for two bits". Depending on the viewpoint of the man talking, his ranch had grown steadily over the years either because he was some kind of land-grabbing skinflint who ruthlessly bought up smaller ranches when they went under, or because he stepped in and risked his financial security to offer his friends better prices for their land than they would have managed to get elsewhere. The most often repeated descriptors by far were "bossy" and "self-righteous". He'd also heard "Indian lover" tossed around a few times, but if people in Tucson were anything like most other people, just hiring that Pawnee boy would be enough to warrant the label.

"Mr. Galbraith?"

"Yes?" He turned his attention to Manolito, half-startled to hear himself addressed.

"You did not get chased by the Apache on your way from Tucson?" Manolito was asking.

"Oh, no, nothing like that. I did see a couple of Indians on horseback while I was trying to catch that cow to get milk for the kids, but they just looked at me and gave us a wide berth."

"You're very fortunate," Big John told him. "This measles outbreak is the only thing keeping the Apaches from launching another all-out war. They stay well away from the sickness."

"Really? I hadn't heard anything about that. In fact, I heard somebody say in Tucson that Cochise had been subdued. I assumed that meant things were reasonably peaceful." He'd heard horror stories in his youth about the Apaches and their two great chiefs, Cochise and Geronimo, but there hadn't been much news of them in the last few years.

His companions exchanged a look.

"Subdued?" laughed Buck. "Yeah, I guess ol' Cochise couldn't get much more subdued at that."

"Cochise is dead," John explained. "His son took his place as chief, but he doesn't have the same sort of influence that his father had over the rest of 'em. So now there's a struggle for power going on with the Apaches, and sometimes we take the brunt of it. Geronimo and some of the other chiefs are pretty hostile towards white settlers. Not that Cochise was exactly peaceful, but we could usually work out some kind of agreement with him."

Ben paled. "Oh. I had no idea. I guess it's true what they say. God looks after fools and little children."

"If that weren't true, probably none of us'd be here," Buck said.


	2. Dearly Departed

Chapter Two

"Dearly Departed"

"Now don't forget to add the total from the first column to the total from this column over here."

"Yes, sir. Just as soon as I finish getting the total."

"And be sure to double-check all the figures."

"I'll triple-check it."

"No, no point going overboard. Never get anything done that way."

"Right, Mr. Cannon." Ben fought to keep the irritation out of his voice. After four days in John's company, he believed every single good thing he'd ever heard about the man … and he was rapidly gaining sympathy for the viewpoints of those who had spoken of him with near loathing.

Either way, he greatly regretted ever having made the offhand comment about working as a bookkeeper during the winter when building work got scarce. The simple statement had been met with surprising enthusiasm by the whole family; apparently a bookkeeper was exactly what the High Chaparral had needed for years. He'd wondered, briefly, why they simply hadn't hired someone to do the job, but the answer became apparent just as soon as he'd opened up the first ledger. A century later, John would have been called a micro-manager – the sort of boss who delegated authority and then obsessively checked over every detail of everybody else's work. Ben, of course, didn't know that term; he only knew that he _hovered._ Every single number he wrote down, every single calculation he made was double-checked by the man standing right over his shoulder.

Victoria, who knew better than anyone the mood her husband got into when the ledgers came out, tried to help the situation as best she could. She came in to clean, in spite of having cleaned the office only the day before, she brought them cups of coffee, and several times she called John away on some transparent pretext or other. She succeeded only in irritating him into snapping at her.

Daisy, too, wandered in and out, unable to be away from her father's side for very long. She seldom spoke, so that often they didn't even know she was in the room until Victoria came looking for her. This time when they heard Victoria calling her name they immediately started looking around for her. Ben was in the process of coaxing her out from under the desk when Buck came in.

"John, have you seen—" He broke off as John took the little girl from her father and handed her over. "Oh. Good. Victoria been lookin' for her for about five minutes now. Hey, John, speakin' of Victoria, she wants to talk to you."

"Oh, for pity's sake, what does she want _now?"_

"Well, I don't rightly know, just she said she wants to talk to ya, and you said she couldn't come in here no more."

"What? I said no such thing! Ben, did you hear me tell my wife she wasn't allowed back in this office?"

Ben bent his head low over the ledgers, trying to stay out of the whole thing as much as possible. "No, sir."

Victoria appeared in the doorway. "Buck, did you find her?"

"Victoria, why in the world did you say that I told you you weren't allowed in the study?"

"I didn't say you said that," she said, in spite of having told Buck so in those exact words not ten minutes earlier. "But you implied that I had no business being in here at all, even though it's my house just as much as it is yours and I should have the right to come into any room I want to come into."

"Well, ya do, obviously, and I never said otherwise. But the fact is we're trying to get some work done here, and you—"

"Exactly," she interrupted him. "And I need to talk to you about something important, and if you're just going to argue and yell we should go in the living room, because Ben is trying to work. And anyway, you're frightening Daisy."

"I am not—" he began loudly, then broke off and lowered his voice. "I am not frightening the child, Victoria. Am I?" he asked the little girl. She didn't _seem_ terribly upset, but she pressed herself back against Buck's chest and stared at him with blue eyes as wide as saucers. It was more or less her usual response to him; he was just too big and too loud. Gruffly he said, "Well. I'm sorry if I did."

They all left the room, shutting the door behind them this time, and Ben breathed a sigh of relief as he finally got down to work.

* * *

In the living room, John seated himself on one end of the sofa and looked up at his wife. "Well? What's so urgent it couldn't wait till later?"

Victoria picked an imaginary speck of dust off the lampshade. Not looking at him, she said, "It's not so urgent as you say, but soon it will be important to get gates or something for the front doors."

"Gates?"

"Gates or screens or spindle doors like those," she said, pointing at the side door. "We need to have them open to the air, but it's not safe for the children."

John stared at her. "Victoria, the children aren't going to be here that long."

"Well, I know that, John, but while they are here Daisy is running all over the house, and the baby will be crawling long before they leave for California. I don't want them to go outside where they can be trampled by horses right there by the front door. And there are scorpions out there, and there could be snakes."

"You'll just have to keep a closer eye on them, that's all," he told her. He knew it was the wrong thing to say the instant the words were out of his mouth.

Sure enough, her hands went to her hips and her mouth pursed up into a scowl. "John Cannon, I can't be expected to cook and take care of the house and still look after these children every single second their father is busy. I must have gates!"

He gave up. "All right, all right. I've never heard of anything so silly as having gates for babies, but if that's what you want, we'll figure out something. Can't have Daisy getting trampled by horses, can we?" he said, more than half joking at what he considered the absurdity of the whole thing.

Daisy looked up, startled, from Buck's lap where she had been playing with the snake rattle on his hatband. "No!" she said, loud and clear. "No horses!"

The three adults burst out laughing.

"You don't like horses, Li'l Bit?" Buck asked with a grin.

"No! Don't like scary horses."

John said, "You know, I've been riding horses since I was about your age. So has Buck, here." The look she gave him made it clear she didn't believe these two big men could ever _possibly_ have been her age. He tried again from a different angle. "I had my little boy up in the saddle with me when he was smaller than you. He wasn't afraid of horses, even if they are real big."

Daisy sat and thought about that. The other three picked up their conversation about the gates, trying to decide if it would be best to just nail up some boards in a frame or make something more elaborate out in the blacksmith shop. After a few minutes, the little girl left Buck's lap and scooted across the sofa to Big John. She sat up on her knees and touched his sleeve. He looked down in surprise. Up to now she'd avoided almost all contact with him, so he was somewhat pleased by the unexpected visit.

"Where your little boy at?" she wanted to know.

"Oh, he's all grown up now, and moved away."

"You have a little girl?"

"No. No, just the one boy."

That satisfied her curiosity, and she climbed onto his lap and settled herself down. John looked up and met his wife's eyes with an expression of amused pleasure. He moved his arm to support the child, his huge hand cupping one of her tiny legs.

Victoria, standing across from him by the fireplace, watched the little scene with a sort of aching smile on her face, heart so full of love that she would have forgiven him anything. For all his admitted awkwardness around children, there was a kind of inherent gentleness in him that few besides herself ever got to see, and it was on full display now with Daisy. She wondered how much of that was because he was missing his only child. Blue had been gone now for about eighteen months, and they seldom heard from him these days. A few weeks ago they'd received a postcard from him from who knows where, its postmark smudged into illegibility, saying he would write when he got settled someplace. John worried about him, she knew that very well. But, being John, he handled his feelings by never talking about it. She could count on one hand the number of times she'd heard Blue's name in the past year, which made the surprisingly casual comment all the more poignant.

* * *

Ben spent the biggest part of the next week or two enduring the boredom and frustration of a formerly active young man with too much time on his hands. He had recovered enough to have sufficient energy to want to go to work, but not enough strength to actually do it. He helped Victoria around the house as much as she would allow, which generally meant he was allowed to clear the table and wash the dishes – not the most satisfying job in the world. She allowed him to do a little milking and to bring in water from the well, but not to carry anything heavier than that.

"You should have your own water pump, right in the kitchen," he told her. "And a proper sink. It should be easy enough to run a pipe down from the water tanks on the roof. It would be a lot easier for you than carrying water from the well and the water barrel." He made up a few preliminary sketches, which he showed to John one night after dinner. John was enthusiastic about the plan, even adding a few improvements of his own, – but he warned that it could take months to get the needed supplies to do such a renovation. Most likely the stuff wouldn't get there until well after the Galbraiths had left for California.

One of the first jobs he did was to take out the glass panes in the front inner doors, as a sort of stop gap measure for the protective gates Victoria wanted. It did allow some air to circulate, but it was not an ideal solution for anyone.

The children, having been far less ill than their parents, were back to their full strength in no time.

Daisy still stuck to her father's side whenever she could. Ever since Rita's death, she had been not only quiet, but excessively clingy. She was fond enough of the Cannons, but Ben was the only one she really wanted to take care of her. Day and night she was his little shadow. Baby Johnny, on the other hand, formed a strong attachment to Victoria. He spent most of his waking hours riding on her hip, just the way his mother had carried him. If she put him down he fussed or sometimes flat-out screamed until he was picked up again. Ben got to give him an occasional bottle at night, but otherwise he wanted only Victoria.

In the evenings, once the children were in bed, Ben sometimes played chess with Big John. He was only a so-so player, but he was such an excellent loser that it worked out very well. Once he made the mistake of asking – fortunately not in their hearing – why Mr. and Mrs. Cannon never seemed to play together. Buck's face went through a fascinating series of expressions before he finally managed to say, "Oh, you don't wanna see that." Manolito was slightly more forthcoming, comparing the battles that raged over the chessboard to fire from on high and thunder that shook the earth. After that, he asked no more questions.

At long last the doctor declared him fit enough for work, provided he did nothing too strenuous. Sam came in, and he and John decided guarding the front gate was probably the best place to start. He thought he could handle walking up and down with a rifle for a few hours, but unfortunately he didn't count on the effects of the sun in the middle of an Arizona summer. He made it more than four hours without any trouble, and then another two with several unsteady trips to the well. He never uttered a word of complaint, or let anyone know that he wasn't feeling well. Then, without warning, he keeled over and had to be carried back to the house by a couple of the other men.

Victoria stuck her head in the door, then came on in when she found Ben propped up on top of the covers with two pillows behind his back. He still looked flushed from the sun, but otherwise well enough. "Did you come to scold me, Mrs. Cannon?" He spoke quietly, for Daisy lay sprawled out next to him, sleeping with her head on his hip.

"No. I understand very well that men sometimes do stupid things just to prove they are men. I came to see how you're feeling."

"Hot. And, well … stupid."

She smiled. "Did Sam scold you as well?"

"Oh, not too bad for a foreman," he said ruefully. "Just bawled me out a little bit. He thinks maybe I should go on night guard for a couple of weeks, so I won't be in the hot sun all the time." She nodded her approval and he added, "'Course I'm afraid that means it'll probably be on you to look after the kids durin' the day while I sleep. They should be all right at night, though. I could probably come in and check on 'em once or twice, if I clear it with Sam first."

"Yes, I should think so. Sam's fond of children. And I would enjoy looking after them during the day."

"Thank you."

" _De nada."_

"Hmm?"

"It's nothing," she translated. "You should learn to speak Spanish if you intend to be in Arizona and California. Now, I will leave you alone so you can go back to reading your Bible."

Ben looked down at the book he'd held unopened in his lap. "Nah. Couldn't read it if I wanted to. It's in Swedish," he explained. "It belonged to Rita – she brought it over with her from the old country when she was eleven. Got it outta the wagon yesterday. Thought that it was about time I—" He choked on the grapefruit-sized lump in his throat and couldn't go on.

Victoria sat down on the end of the bed, giving him a look of deep sympathy and understanding. "I understand. Not long ago my father died. I still have moments when I don't wish to think about him being gone."

"I'm sorry to hear that," he said. Looking at the Bible once more, he said, "I still haven't been able to bring myself to write it down. It'll make it real, you see."

"Yes, I see."

For a few minutes she sat watching his struggle in silent sympathy, unable to help the young man one way or another. Finally he squared his shoulders and reached for the fountain pen lying on the bedside table. He opened up the Bible to the family tree pages and resolutely scrawled a few quick words. "There," he said, with relief in his voice. "That's done."

He placed the book down on the other side of his sleeping daughter, page lying open to allow the ink to dry. Recapping the pen, he handed it over to Victoria, who slipped it into the pocket of her apron. "I hope your husband won't mind me using his good pen."

"My husband will never know about it," she said with a wink. "The pen will be back on his desk long before he returns home this evening."

"I still have to write to my brother. They'll be expecting us before much longer. Not lookin' forward to that, either." He was silent for so long that Victoria wondered if she should leave him alone. Just as she was about to get up and make her excuses, the young man suddenly spoke. He didn't look at her, just watched his little girl as she slept, stroking her wispy blonde hair with one callused hand. "I never used to think that Daisy favoured her mother very much, but now … I don't know. Lately I can't seem to look at her without seeing Rita. Maybe it's just wishful thinking."

"At least you have the children to remember her by."

He nodded. "Yeah. I do. I just hate that they're so little they won't even remember her. I don't remember my ma, either. She was just a picture in the parlour and a few words in Pa's Bible," he said bitterly. "Just like Rita will be to these two."

"The ink should be dry by now," said Victoria, picking up the Bible. She looked down at the entries which were written in a few different hands, then over at Ben. "Do you mind?"

"No, no. Look at it if you want. It's good. I want people to know about her."

She smiled, and turned her attention to the last few entries. Handwriting that had probably belonged to Rita's mother recorded (in Swedish) the marriage of Margareta Maria Eva Lindstrom to Benton Stewart Galbraith, almost four years ago. Then two entries for the births of their children, written in English in a loopy, girlish hand. The first name held her attention for a moment, and she glanced over at Daisy in surprise before moving on to the last entry, the one Ben had only just written.

Twenty-two years old. The poor little thing. Twenty-two, with a husband who adored her and two wonderful children. She probably would have had more. She should have had her whole life ahead of her, not snuffed out when she was barely more than a child herself, leaving her family behind to try and cope without her.

Victoria closed the book softly and handed it to Ben. With a gentle hand she touched the hem of Daisy's dress. "So her name is Margaret," she said, with an attempt at casual cheerfulness that didn't quite ring true, even to her own ears. Madre de dios, what was wrong with her? It was quite a common name, after all. She encountered someone named Margaret several times a year without it bothering her at all.

"Mm hmm. After her mother. Johnny's called after my grandfather on my mother's side. Frank's used up all the Galbraith family names," he laughed.

Victoria didn't respond. Still looking at Daisy she said, "Margaret was the name of my daughter. She would have been seven next week."

"Oh."

"For years I prayed for a child, and she was the only baby I ever had. But she came too soon – she was born dead."

"I'm very sorry, Mrs. Cannon," Ben said.

She shrugged it off. Getting to her feet, she crossed to the window and looked outside, though she wasn't really seeing anything out there. She turned back. Her eyes went to the baby sleeping in his box on the floor. "I think Johnny will need a bigger box very soon," she said, with a smile that wasn't false this time.

"Yeah," his father said. "Growing like a weed."

"If you'll excuse me, I must prepare dinner. The men will be home before long, and they don't like to wait. You try and get some rest until then."

* * *

Victoria sat lost in thought, slowly pulling the brush through her long black hair. She started slightly when the bedroom door opened. "Oh, John, it's you," she said, relieved.

"Of course it's me. Victoria, is something the matter?"

"Oh, no. Not really. I was just daydreaming, I suppose."

Taking her at her word, he made no response. He unbuckled his gunbelt and hung it up safely out of the way, and sat down in the chair to take off his boots. His movements were deliberate, unhurried, yet he managed to undress and slide between the sheets long before she finished brushing her hair.

After a few more strokes she stopped and looked at him, still holding the brush as if she'd forgotten its existence. "John," she began, then hesitated.

"Yes?"

"Do you know that Daisy's real name is Margaret?"

 _Oh_ , he thought. _So that's it._ "I didn't, but I'm not surprised. I believe that's usually the case."

"I suppose so." Victoria turned to face the mirror again and went back to brushing her hair with her normal quick strokes.

A few minutes later she laid the brush down on the dressing table and got wearily to her feet. She reached up automatically to extinguish the flame in the wall sconce, then made her way over to the bed and slid in next to John. She moved much closer to him than usual, body right up against his. He raised his arm and draped it around her shoulders, pulling her even closer. Victoria nestled her head against his shoulder and sighed, but she said nothing.

"Victoria?" he said, after several more minutes of silence.

"I'm all right, John," she told him. "I'm just feeling a little sad, because it reminds me of our Margaret. Do you know she would have been seven next week?"

"Oh? Yeah, I suppose that would be about right."

Victoria went on, not hearing him, "I keep seeing her in my mind sometimes, the way she would look now. Always the same, but different every year as she grows up. A little _niña_ with long, black hair, and blue eyes that are so much like yours. Oh, John, such a pretty little girl."

He smiled a bittersweet smile and nodded. "She'd have to be pretty if she looked anything like you."

"Do you ever think about her?"

"Mm," he said noncommittally, because in all honesty he didn't. The subject never crossed his mind save once or twice a year when Victoria brought it up. Unlike his wife, John had never really considered their single stillborn offspring as his _daughter._ There was no Margaret to him, never had been. As a formality, they'd given the poor little mite his mother's name to be buried with, but that was the extent of it.

This morbid fascination with her dead child was a concept so completely alien to him he couldn't even begin to understand it. Some sort of mother-love that took hold at conception and never let go, he supposed. Annalee had been the same way with her first child, the boy they'd lost at five months old. Nearly grieved herself half to death. And of course when Blue came along she'd coddled and overprotected him to an outrageous degree, terrified that she would lose him as well. But at least she'd never done the same thing Victoria was doing now, hadn't spent years picturing little James growing up in her imagination. She'd never been given to flights of fancy the way Victoria was. Not that she would have told him if she had; Annalee had always been far more sensitive to his disapproval than Victoria had _ever_ been.

Well, he wasn't going to condemn either one of them for it. A mother had a right to grieve however she wanted, after all. It was different for a man. John, in both cases, had remained stoic, tried not to grieve at all. Instead, he'd thrown himself even more into his work than usual; day after day, mile after mile he'd ridden it out, dry-eyed and aching. Everybody lost children, he'd told himself, that's just the way things were. Granted, in the course of two marriages he'd fathered three children and only one of those had survived infancy. Not exactly a good average no matter how you looked at it.

He reached out to stroke Victoria's hand and felt her fingers tighten around his. Some little movement made him realise that she was crying silently, lying there in the dark with tears streaming down her cheeks.

"There now," he said, pulling her into his strong embrace. "Try not to let it upset you, Victoria. It's over and done with years ago."

"No, that's not why I'm crying, John, not really," she said, voice muffled by his chest. "It's so unfair. I can see my baby grow up in my mind but I can never hold her. And Rita Galbraith got to hold her babies for such a little while, but she'll never see them grow up. They won't even remember her by the time they get to California."

"I know," said John. "I know. It's damned unfair, all of it."

To anyone else he would have pointed out that life itself was damned unfair a lot of the time, but not to her. Never to her. It would have added to her pain, and that was the last thing he wanted. For a long time they lay wrapped in each other's arms, till the heat of the July night drove them apart. John, for once, fell asleep quickly and stayed asleep, while Victoria lay wide awake for an hour or more, still wrapped up in her pity for herself and for the other young mother who had died before her babies could have a chance to know her.


	3. The Hired Hand

Chapter Three:

"The Hired Hand"

She caught him as he was washing up for supper, just exactly as she planned it. "John, I need to talk to you for a moment."

He fumbled for the towel she held out for him and dried his face before asking, "Mm? What about?"

"I was thinking about this trip you're making tomorrow to check the water. I think you might need more men."

"Oh, you do, do ya? You don't think the usual four's enough this time?" asked John, with just a hint of sarcasm in his voice. He wasn't sure what she was up to, but she was obviously up to something. His wife generally had an opinion on everything, but she seldom bothered mentioning the more mundane aspects of running the ranch unless she had some ulterior motive.

"No, I don't," Victoria said. She did up the buttons of the fresh brown shirt he'd just slipped on, starting at the bottom and working her way up to the top, moving slower with every button. "I think perhaps you should consider taking Ben along as well this time."

"Ben? Why in the world would you want him to tag along?"

"I don't want you to let him tag along, I want you to talk to him. I think he's upset about something that was in the letter he received from his brother yesterday. And besides, he's missing his wife terribly."

"'Course he is. She's only been dead a few weeks. But I really don't see what you think I can do about it, Victoria."

"Well, I don't think you can do anything about it exactly, John, but I do think you could help him if you wanted to. After all, you've been through the same thing yourself, so you know what he's going through. Perhaps you could—"

John shook his head. "No," he said firmly. "Victoria, I am not the kind of a man that other men confide in. I wouldn't even know what to say if one of them tried it. Especially Ben. The boy acts like he's half scared of me sometimes."

Victoria leaned away from him, looking up into his face, which was set with his usual stubborn determination. "Of course he is," she told him. "Everyone is frightened of you except for me."

The stern expression changed to the ghost of a smile. "That's true enough," he said. "You've never been the least bit afraid of me, not even when we were first married."

"No, not even when we were first married," she agreed. "And certainly not since then. After all these years I know you far too well, my husband. As Buck says, you are like a dog whose bark is worse than his bite. And these days even your bark is not so bad as it used to be."

"Is that so?" He placed his hands on her shoulders and pulled her closer, and she knew that she had won. She looked up at him with a triumphant smile, the one that usually got to him one way or another.

"Of course it is," she said, fiddling with his top button. "You'll let Ben go with you tomorrow?"

"Well, I don't see any harm in it if he wants to go. But I'm not promising anything. He's your stray, not mine. I doubt he'll even wanna talk to me in the first place, and I certainly can't promise that I can straighten him out any."

* * *

Somehow or other, though, he wasn't too surprised to find the whole thing working out just the way Victoria wanted.

It would have made the most sense for Sam to keep the new man with him, but when they reached their turn-off point, Sam said, "Buck and Mano, you go take a look at Arrowhead Creek. Ben, you stay with the boss," then rode off by himself. John could have overruled him, of course, but overruling the foreman in front of the men was hardly ever a good idea. So he didn't say a word against it, just rode off with the boy following after him.

For a good while, the two of them rode mostly in silence. Occasionally Ben would ask a question about something he saw, or John would point out a landmark or something else he should know about. Slowly he began to let his guard down. After all, there was no guarantee that Victoria _had_ arranged things so that her husband would be left alone in Ben's company, though it was enough of a coincidence to arouse his suspicions. She did have a knack for getting her own way, no matter what she wanted.

Shortly after they completed their inspection of the first water, Ben spotted a massive, colourful lizard sunning itself at the water's edge. He pulled up short. "What in the world is that thing?"

John, just ahead of him, slowed and looked over his shoulder to where he pointed. "They call it a Gila monster in these parts. Plenty of 'em around here. He's out a little late in the day, though."

"It looks like a Chinese paper dragon. Are they dangerous?"

"Well, you don't wanna touch one – or smell one, for that matter – and you sure don't wanna let him bite ya. But nah, they move too slow to be any threat. They'll leave you alone if you leave them alone."

Ben edged his horse closer, staring at the thing. "Oh, I'll leave 'em alone," he said. "Believe you me. I wouldn't wanna come up on one unaware."

"Yeah. We used to get 'em at the house more than we do now. First week we got here Annalee found one under the stool when she picked up her laundry basket. Nearly screamed the house down before I got downstairs to see what was the matter."

He laughed at the memory, but Ben went suddenly quiet. "That was the first Mrs. Cannon, right?" he asked, and John could have kicked himself. "Your wife told me about her when I first got here."

"Figured she did." Almost involuntarily, his voice lost every trace of friendliness, became cold and wary.

Ben's attention was focused inward, on his own pain and loneliness, but his employer's shift in mood was so abrupt it managed to catch his attention anyway. "It wasn't gossip," he said hastily, afraid that John would be angry with her. "I said … well, I don't know what I said to her back then. Just that I couldn't stand the thought that I brought my wife out here to start a new life, and brought her to her death instead. Mrs. Cannon said I was being silly. Then she told me that your first wife was killed shortly after you came here, and that you grieved for her and came out stronger than ever. I just couldn't help wondering how you _stood_ it."

The instant the last sentence was out of his mouth he knew he'd gone too far. He looked over at John, gauging his reaction to the gaffe, and he knew by the set of the man's shoulders and the way he stared straight ahead without looking at him that he'd crossed a line that should never have been crossed. The silence stretched on between them, to the point that it made Ben more than a little nervous. John's assessment of him the evening before hadn't been too far off the mark. Like many people, he was just a touch afraid of him, even if it was mixed with a good deal of admiration and respect. His boss wasn't a man he wanted angry with him, so he strove to apologise.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Cannon. It's none of my business, and I apologise for speaking out of turn."

John looked over at him finally, accepting the apology with a grunt. No matter how uncomfortable the question made him, he couldn't really find it in his heart to blame the boy for asking. At his age, in his shoes, he might have been tempted to seek out any sort of answer he could find, too. But, of course, when he'd actually been in Ben's situation, he'd been a quarter of a century older, a quarter century more set in his ways. By that point in his life he'd become as incapable of asking another human being to help him understand Annalee's death as he was incapable of helping Ben to understand Rita's now. It was a shame, really. He wished he could be more help to him, could do what Victoria had really been asking for when she sent them out together, but he just couldn't. He just didn't have it in him. He lacked Victoria's natural empathy for people. In the few weeks Ben and his family had been with them, she had come to think of him as a kind of surrogate son. John still thought of him as a hired hand. Likeable, admirable in his own way, but in the scheme of things no more important than any of his wife's many other strays.

Still, he did what he could.

"I had no other choice," he said. "Had a ranch I had to get up and running. People dependin' on me. Didn't have time to dwell on much else. You have your children, a life to make for the three of you."

That brought a faint smile to Ben's face. "Yeah. I'm not sure I could have gone on without them. Don't think I would have had the strength. I'm still not sure I do."

John looked him over, weighing everything he knew about him. "You do, boy. You do. You'll find it out in time. This is the turn-off for Big Pond right up here," he said, signalling in no uncertain terms the end of the conversation. The two men rode in near silence the rest of the way, speaking only when John pointed out something he felt Ben should know about.

John's mood improved drastically when he saw the pond. The level was down, but it was nowhere near as bad as he'd feared. "Seen it worse than this a lot of times. This is not too bad for August. Not too bad at all." He got off his horse, indicating that Ben should do the same. As he built the campfire he explained, "We had a good snowfall in the mountains last winter, and not a drop of rain since. This is the result. I know it looks low to you, but I've seen it a good three feet lower by this time o' year."

"You must be relieved."

"That's not the word for it."

As Ben waited for the food and coffee to be ready, he asked, "What's winter like around here, anyway?"

"Well, compared to where you're from, it's like summer. Why? You plannin' on staying that long?"

Ben shrugged. "I dunno. Sure wasn't planning on it, but the wagon trains will stop running in a month or two, won't they? You pay good wages, Mr. Cannon, but I won't have near enough time to save up what I need by then. And I can't go by myself, especially not with the little ones."

"No. No, you can't do that. On our way out here we travelled, oh, about a hundred and fifty miles or so by ourselves. First wagon train we were with was only going to Texas, and I didn't want to wait for another one to come through heading west. They said we were crazy to go off on our own. Maybe we were. Obviously we made it, but even with three grown men we were attacked by Comanches before we met up with another bunch of wagons." He spooned beans into a plate and handed it over to his companion, then sat back to enjoy his own meal.

Ben ate and drank absentmindedly, lost in his own thoughts. After a few minutes of silence he said abruptly, "You think two grown men and a half-grown boy could make it from here to the middle of California?"

John thought it over. "Maybe," he answered finally. "You'd be takin' a risk, though, especially with the children. What's your plan?"

"Well, it's not a plan, exactly. Not yet. I got a letter from my brother Frank the other day. He thinks he might – _might_ – be able to come out to meet me here before winter, along with his oldest boy. But he's not sure he can afford to stop work long enough to make the trip. And his wife's sicker than I thought, so he don't wanna leave her, either."

"Understandable."

Ben shrugged, and gave a loud sigh of irritation. "So. Here we are."

"So I see. Well, you're welcome to stay a few more months," John said. "Could always use the extra help. Have to teach ya a little more about ranching," he added with a chuckle.

"Yeah, I could sure use it. I'm more than happy to keep working for you, but I don't want to keep imposing on you and Mrs. Cannon. Especially her. She does _everything_ for Daisy and Johnny. Maybe I could pay some woman in Tucson to look after 'em for awhile, then I could move into the bunkhouse with—"

John stopped him before he could get any further. "Whoa, now, hold it right there, boy. I'd like to just _see_ you try and get those children away from Mrs. Cannon for some arrangement like that. We'd neither one of us hear the end of it for a good long time. No, you better just stay put for the time being."

"Thank you, sir," Ben said gratefully. "I appreciate it. Maybe by then I'll be able to think a little clearer. Right now, it's like … I dunno, like the ground's sort of disappeared out from under my feet."

"Well. Only to be expected. That'll go away in time." There was the expected gruffness in John's voice, of course, but there was a great deal of sympathy, too. Even after all these years he remembered the feeling all too well.

"How did you—?" Ben blurted out before he could stop himself. Then, remembering his vow not to trespass on such a personal subject, he said nothing else.

John got to his feet and threw the dregs of the coffee onto the fire, kicking dirt over what remained. Not looking at the boy, he said, "How did I what? Get the ground back under my feet?"

"Yeah."

"I got married again," he answered tersely.

Ben stood still for a minute, not sure how he was supposed to take that.

John checked his cinch and pulled on the saddle horn to make sure everything was secure before he mounted. He looked over at the frowning young man. It took quite an effort not to say, as he would to any of his other men, "Well? Are you coming back with me or do you intend to stay here the rest of the day?" But he resisted the urge. After a moment, Ben shook himself out of it. He started to get right up on his horse, but John cleared his throat meaningfully. With a flush of embarrassment he gave the saddle a quick once over and, finding everything all right, put his foot in the stirrup.

"I suppose that's one idea," he said when they were underway.

"What is?" With a dawning sense of disbelief John realised what he must mean. "Surely you don't mean marrying again?"

"Why not? That way the children would have somebody to look after them, and she'd be help to my sister-in-law with hers, just like Rita was going to be. Oh, I don't mean a _real_ marriage of course, just a, what do they call it? Marriage of convenience."

"In name only?" John suggested drily.

"Yeah, that's right. In name only. Nothing else, then or ever."

John gave a snort of a laugh. "That'd last about a day," he said, speaking from bitter experience. "If you're lucky." He shook his head and sighed, thinking how terribly young the boy was after all. He fooled them all, sometimes. He was so much older than Blue had been at twenty-three, had been through so much more, but he was still very young indeed if he could say something like that in complete earnest.

Ben shrugged off his words. "Just something to think about," he said. "I'm fresh out of any other ideas."

"Well, just you think long and hard about it, boy," John said. "And think on this, too: out here in the west, women are pretty scarce on the ground. They've got plenty of men to choose from. What do you think you have to offer? Oh, you're young and strong, yeah, probably make your way in the world eventually. But right now you're poor, you're still half-starved in spite of Mrs. Cannon's good meals, and you've got two motherless children to support. Not to mention the likelihood of more if you take another wife. You just take your time, give it some thought. You can always hire some girl to come in and help out your sister-in-law if she can't manage."

"All right," said Ben, with a somewhat sheepish smile. "I'll think about it, write to Frank and Esther, maybe. I'll try not to rush off and do something stupid."

"Well, that's always a good start."

* * *

It was a good day for a fiesta, one of those pleasant September afternoons where the temperature stayed well below 100°. Far to the west, billowing white clouds were steadily building into massive peaks, bringing in a wind which blew just enough to keep the bugs away, but not enough to blow sand in the food or threaten the napkins on the table. Everyone joked that Victoria would accept no less for the celebration of her wedding anniversary. She and John sat together at the head of the table, smiling happily, their joined hands resting in the folds of her skirt.

Daisy romped barefoot in the hot sand, running and skipping, throwing her arms over her head and squealing with delight, always being careful to keep well away from the corral and all the scary horses. In the shade of the porch, Johnny slept in a borrowed bed, tired out after a morning of being allowed to crawl through the house to his heart's content.

Buck looked up at the sky, noticing that the clouds were starting to take on the first tinge of grey. "Victoria, looks like your party's about to be rained out."

"No, I don't think so. It will be at least an hour, maybe more before it rains here."

" _If_ it rains here," said John. "And I sure hope it does."

Victoria smiled at him and tightened her fingers against his. "It will, my husband," she assured him. "As a present for your anniversary."

"Well, that's the present that I'd appreciate more'n about anything. I suppose you arranged things with the Almighty, did you?"

"Not arranged things, no. But I have prayed for it for weeks, for it to rain today of all days. After my fiesta, of course."

"Of course," he agreed, grinning.

Mano jumped to his feet. "Speaking of anniversary gifts," he said, "here is mine to you, my dear sister and brother-in-law. A special song, composed—"

"On the spot," interrupted Buck.

"…just for you. With no interruptions," Mano added, raising his eyebrows in Buck's direction. He picked up his guitar from its place by the table and propped his knee up on the bench to make a support for the instrument. To everyone's surprise, instead of one of the fast-paced impromptu bits of nonsense he occasionally sang at parties, this was his attempt at a love song. It was a slow and gentle piece, all in Spanish, about love at first sight. Not the most appropriate thing for John and Victoria given their beginning, but it was touching and he was just drunk enough to carry it off beautifully.

As soon as the song finished, Victoria leapt to her feet and flung her arms around her brother's neck. "Oh, Manolo, it was wonderful! _Gracias!"_

Buck leaned back a little, arms folded across his chest, regarding his best friend. "Well, I will say I heard worse from you, Mano. A whole lot worse. But they say it's the thought that counts, so I guess if Victoria liked it mebbe that's all that really matters."

John burst out laughing, and Victoria turned a glare on both of the Cannon brothers. "Stop that, both of you. That was a _beautiful_ song, and I won't have you teasing Manolito about it after he took the time to come up with it just to celebrate our anniversary."

John coughed and tried to hide his amusement behind his hand. Buck sat there and grinned, and Mano let out a soft snort and began to laugh, himself. Within seconds, Sam, then Joe, and then the rest of the men in the immediate vicinity were laughing as well.

Victoria put her hands on her hips and looked daggers at all of them, lips pursed in irritation. Men! She didn't say a word, knowing that any complaint would make them laugh all the harder. She hoped they would enjoy doing all those dishes, though.

A second later, all thought of dirty dishes and the perfidy of men completely vanished from her head. "Daisy?" she called, looking around everywhere. The child was nowhere to be seen. She raised her voice. "Daisy! John, I can't find her."

The laughter died away immediately as everyone got to their feet and began looking for her. In just a moment, though, Sam said, "Ma'am?" She followed his nod, saw with relief that the missing girl was safe and sound in her father's arms, being carried back from the gate where she'd gone to be with him.

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Cannon," Ben apologised as he came up to them. "I just can't stop her from coming to me."

"It's all right, Ben. She wants to be with her daddy, that's perfectly understandable. I will keep a closer eye on her from now on." She took Daisy from him and held her up to her face, rubbing noses with her and making affectionate baby-talk.

Ben nodded, reassured, and headed over to Sam. In a very quiet voice he said, "Sam, could I speak to you and Mr. Cannon alone for a minute?"

"Sure thing, Ben. Boss?" he called, gesturing with his head for John to join them. The three men walked a few feet away from the group and spoke in hushed voices.

Ben looked serious. "Look, I didn't want to alarm anybody, because it might well have been nothing, but I thought you should know in case it's not. Just before Daisy came up I thought I saw something out there in the brush. Just a shadow, just for a split second, then it was gone. Pedro says he didn't see anything."

"Could it have been a shadow from a cloud?" John asked, looking up at the sky and the storm clouds that were moving in closer.

"I don't think so. Moved too quick, and it was too small, anyway."

John exchanged a look with Sam. "All right. Whether you saw anything out there or not, it'd sure be a good idea to be a little more vigilant. Go back to your post and keep a close eye on everything out there, and tell Pedro to keep his open for a change. Sam, you station a few more men around the perimeter and tell Tommy to be alert up there on the roof."

"Yes, sir." The foreman stalked off to rouse the least drunk of the men into action, and Ben went back to his post at the gate. John, lost in thought, made his way slowly back to the table.

"Is there anything wrong, John?" Victoria asked, looking at him with concern. She'd been able to read his moods almost from the start, and after all these years together it was second nature to her.

He opened his mouth to answer, but before he could get the words out all hell broke loose. Someone yelled, "Apaches!" and the whole compound was suddenly a mass of activity. Men running to the fence, running to the bunkhouse for rifles, hastily shoving wagons across each of the gates and turning them on their sides to use as cover.

John yelled at the top of his lungs, _"Ben!"_ As the young man came loping over he ordered, "Get in the house, look after Mrs. Cannon and the children!"

Victoria was already running to the porch, carrying a suddenly terrified Daisy. She stopped to scoop up the baby in her other arm. In an instant Ben was at her side, shoving the crib through the open door and slamming it shut behind them. Victoria put both children in the safety of the crib and ran around securing all the doors and windows in the house.

When she came back she found Ben looking out the gun port in the door, rifle at the ready, and simultaneously making shushing noises in a futile effort to comfort his crying children.

"How bad is it out there?"

"I don't know. Looks real bad to me, but I've never seen anything like it before. Mrs. Cannon, I think you should take the kids down into the cold cellar. I'll stay up here and—"

Victoria gave no indication of hearing him. She calmly picked up both Daisy and Johnny and took them over to the sofa, sharing her lap between the two of them. She rocked them back and forth, trying to soothe them, praying they wouldn't be alarmed at the thundering of her heart. When their panicked crying quieted to an occasional whimper, she said, "No, it wouldn't be safe. There is no other way out of there. Before we lived here this place belonged to a family called Rivera. Once when the Apaches attacked they found three servants hiding there."

"Yeah, I can guess the rest."

Neither of them paid attention to how long the battle went on outside, just watched and waited. Their guns were unnecessary this time; the men held the line. Then, without warning, the Apaches called off the attack and rode off as abruptly as they'd come. The men outside watched for a few minutes, then began to regroup and take stock of the damage and injuries.

As soon as their guard was relaxed, the Apache warriors flew back at them and the battle was on again. Several more times this happened, attack and retreat, attack and retreat, leaving the men of the Chaparral unsure if any retreat was going to finally be the last one.

Inside, Ben was just as confused by the technique. "Is that the way they usually attack?"

"No. I've never seen them do this before," Victoria said worriedly. She went to the dining room and came back several minutes later with a couple of cloth bags, which clanked loudly as she laid them on the hip wall in front of the stairs. "I may need to go out soon to give the men extra ammunition," she explained.

"I'll do that," he offered. "I'll go out as soon as there's another lull."

She shook her head. "Thank you, Ben, but no. I know what I am doing. I have many years of practice."

Had it been possible for his intense admiration for this woman to become even greater, this show of bravery would have done it. He hated to think of her willingly going out there into that hell, but he was honest enough to admit to himself that he hated the thought of going out and doing it himself just as much. He'd heard plenty of talk since his arrival about the escalating tensions with the Apaches, but the reality of the attack was so much worse than anything he could have imagined.

The sky was darkening a little more all the time, and there was a rumble of thunder overhead. It looked like they were going to get the promised rain today after all.

"I don't suppose the Indians would just give up if it starts to rain?" Ben asked. It was as close as he could come to a joke under the circumstances.

Victoria shook her head. "No. But our men might, if their guns become wet."

"And then what?"

"Then they must come inside and use the house as a fortress."

Ben swallowed hard. He looked over at the crib where his two tiny, defenseless children lay half-asleep, and said a little prayer for their safety.

Victoria did the same, then crossed herself when she finished. She moved around the room, lighting lamps and candles against the gathering darkness. Perhaps the Apaches would leave when they could no longer see their targets. They did that sometimes. But they couldn't count on it; there had been nothing in this battle that was at all typical.

She wrapped her arms around herself, trying to ward off the superstitious chill that gripped her. If only—

The narrow view of the yard was suddenly illuminated by a bright flash of lightning, followed almost immediately by a violent clap of thunder directly overhead. Victoria gave a startled gasp and the baby began to cry again. She picked him up and bounced him in her arms. In just a little while he was quiet again, though fully awake. The thunder grew louder and more frequent, but neither of the children seemed particularly bothered by it.

The rain, when it started, seemed like bitter irony. An hour ago they'd been enjoying their party and joking about a good rainfall being the best anniversary present there could be. Now, the only gift Victoria could see ever wanting was just for them all to survive the day.

* * *

Things gradually grew quieter outside. The Apaches might not be afraid of the rain, but they were sensible enough to treat lightning with the respect it warranted. This time when they rode off, everyone knew the battle was over for the time being.

Victoria, watching the scene from the other door, squeezed her eyes shut and whispered, _"Gracias a dios!"_ She gave the baby a quick little hug, then squared her shoulders and got ready for the work that was about to begin. She moved the crib over by the door of the study where it would be out of the way, and put Johnny down with a little kiss on the cheek, reaching one hand out to caress Daisy for the briefest instant before she left.

Ben was grinning like an overgrown kid. He'd been attacked by Apaches and lived to tell the tale! What a great story this was going to make for his nephews!

He opened the front door to welcome in the weary combatants, some of whom responded to his enthusiastic grin with grins of their own. They'd all been young and excitable once, too, and they understood all too well what he was feeling.

Victoria, on the other hand, didn't. She shook her head at all the grinning and the shoulder slapping, and curtly ordered him to bring down the spare cot from his room. She bustled around the ground floor, moving furniture, gathering bandages, and generally getting ready to care for the wounded men who were already beginning to stream through the door.

Joe was the first patient. Pedro and Buck helped him into the house and onto the cot, where he collapsed with a grunt. Victoria opened his blue shirt and examined the gunshot wound in his side. Not life-threatening, thank goodness, but it was bad enough. She removed the bullet as quickly and efficiently as possible. The doctor would most likely have to redo the makeshift stitches, but it would keep the wound from opening further underneath the bandages.

As she moved about tending to the rest of the injuries, all of them much more trivial than Joe's, she acquired a helper. Someone had taken Daisy out of the crib, and she was now dogging Victoria's every step, watching everything she did and giving each patient a comforting pat near the injured area. The sight of blood didn't seem to bother her in the slightest. The men couldn't help laughing at the sight of the little girl, not even three years old yet, calmly handing over bandages, scissors, or anything else Victoria pointed out to her.

It was bedtime by the time everyone was patched up, and the rain was finally ending. The last of the wounded, minus Joe, who needed to be kept comfortable, headed back to the bunkhouse. Manolito rode into Tucson with orders to bring the doctor first thing in the morning.

John sat on the edge of his bed, finally letting his wife take a look at the area on his forearm where an arrow had nicked him. It barely even required a bandage, but she liked to fuss.

"Why did the Apache keep riding away and then coming back to fight again?" she asked curiously.

"Oh, just to keep us on edge, I think. Mano said he thought that young chief, Blooded Calf, was their leader. He's Soldado's younger brother, or perhaps his nephew, and he's said to be quite the strategist."

"I don't care much for his strategy," said Victoria.

John grimaced. "Can't say I care much for it, either. Last thing we need around here is for the Apache leaders to get younger and smarter. I never thought I'd find myself missing Cochise's _cool-headedness."_

"You and he were almost friends."

He gave a slight chuckle. "I suppose that's a word for it. Friendly enemies, anyway." With a twinkle in his eye, he added, "Not unlike your father and me, when it comes right down to it."

Victoria yanked suddenly on the ends of the bandage she was fastening, making it a good deal tighter than it needed to be. "John Cannon, how can you say such a thing about a man who was always your friend and benefactor for all these years? Why, if it were not for my father, it might have taken years for you and I to marry."

Her husband looked at her in surprise. "We likely wouldn't have married at all without that crazy bargain of his. You'd have accepted one of those suitors eventually."

She shook her head. "No. Not after finally meeting the man I wished to marry. I would have continued to be stubborn and say no to my father's wishes, and you would have come often to my father's house to do business with him."

"Oh. Oh, I see. You'd have been his hostess, and in charge of entertaining me."

"That's right."

He saw it all then, the way it would have likely played out. With her in charge of entertaining her father's guest, the two of them would have spent much time in one another's company, getting to know one another. She would have been sympathetic over his poor dead wife, while he had time to get over her loss. Their friendship would have flourished in no time. The physical attraction had always been there, he'd admitted that to himself from the start, no matter how it discomfited him.

And her father, having observed that for himself, would have pushed the match relentlessly even if he hadn't chosen to force it instead. Not for the first time, John thought just how much he really did owe the wily old don for that insane trade-off he'd proposed, eleven years ago this very day.

"Victoria," he said gently. She looked up at him. "Happy anniversary."

* * *

It was just about suppertime when Mano arrived home from Nogales. To his disappointment, he found his sister had eaten with the children earlier and had every intention of making him wait for his dinner until John and the other men got home. The more he nagged about his hunger, the more intractable she became.

"I'll go out to the bunkhouse and eat with them," he warned her.

Victoria tossed her head. "Good. Perhaps a night of Pedro's cooking will make you see you should not have your way all of the time."

"Ai yi yi, what a stubborn woman you are," he muttered, but he stayed where he was. "I hope they return soon."

But they didn't.

An hour passed, then another, and still they weren't home. Victoria didn't say anything, but her increasing anxiety was very evident in her expression. She got up once and went to the door, pretending not to look at the clock as she did.

With a sigh, she sat back down with her sewing basket and started working on another of the small dresses she was making for one of the children. She'd made so many by this point that they'd all started teasing her that those kids would have so many clothes by the time she was finished they'd never have time to wear them all before they outgrew them. They would certainly be the most well-dressed kids in California.

Her brother sat in the chair and played game after game of solitaire, his cards laid out on the little round table in front of him. By that time, it had been dark for more than two hours, and he'd taken to pretending not to worry right along with her.

Victoria heard a small sound and looked up from her sewing. Daisy stood at the top of the stairs, wiping her eyes sleepily with one tiny fist. She put down the dress and went to her, scooping her up in her arms.

"Daisy, what are you doing out of bed, my darling?"

The child's voice was a sleepy whine. "I want Daddy."

Victoria cuddled her close. "I'm afraid your daddy isn't home yet," she said. She carried her over to the sofa and sat down carefully. "We are waiting for your daddy, and my husband, and Buck. Would you like to sit in my lap for awhile and wait with me?"

"Nooo," whined Daisy. But she put her head against Victoria's shoulder, and was asleep again within moments.

Mano's eyes held a look of undisguised tenderness as he watched his sister hold the little girl. Victoria had always been happiest with children around. No matter how big or how small, whether they were teenaged horse thieves or tiny Apache orphans, those maternal instincts of hers would kick in and she would offer all the comforting and all the nurturing they could possibly need, right up until the inevitable moment when they left her. These children, too, would be taken away from her before long.

"They'll be leaving soon, I think," he said.

"Yes. Ben had another letter from his brother while you were gone. He and his son may leave for Arizona within a week. And when he gets here, they will load up their wagon again and leave for California, and we'll never see them again." She gave him a stricken look. "Oh, Mano, I can't bear to think of their going. I'll miss Ben, of course, but I don't know what I will do without these two precious babies."

He reached over and laid a comforting hand on her knee. "I know, _hermanita_ _mia_. You know, I think perhaps in a way we will all feel a little like that. The house is going to seem … very empty," he admitted.

"Yes, it will," she said. "I thought it was bad before they came, but now, when I've been used to them every day… Oh, I know they must go with their father, but it hurts so much to give them up. I tried to talk to my husband about it, but…" The sentence trailed off, and she gave a little shrug of resignation.

"But … he was John?" he suggested, filling in the rest of the thought.

Victoria laughed. "Yes! He was very, very John. He sees only the practical. Ben must go to California and help his brother build houses, and the children must be with their father. And I know that, Manolito, I do. But still I am selfish and I want them all here with me."

* * *

"Victoria. You should go to bed."

She blinked in surprise. Had she dozed off? Instinctively, she looked down to check on Daisy. She was still sleeping peacefully by her side, her fair hair highlighted against the fabric of Victoria's black skirt.

"Perhaps," she said. "But not quite yet. I want to wait up just a little while longer."

"You will not make him arrive any sooner by losing sleep," her brother pointed out. "Go to bed. When you wake up in the morning, John will be there with you and you'll feel foolish for having worried about him being a little late."

"I hope so. But he is more than a little late – they should have been home before dark. Something is wrong."

He tried to keep his expression reassuring for her sake. "Yes, I agree. _Something_ has gone wrong. But most likely there is nothing to worry about. Some of the cattle have gone missing, that's all. Or a wolf has attacked the herd and they need to watch over them tonight. John doesn't have enough men with him to spare one just to come and tell you he will be late for supper."

She nodded without replying, but none of the anxiety had gone out of her face.

Mano sighed. "Ai, Victoria. I will never know why I offer to do these ridiculous things just to make you happy, but … would you like me to ride out to them and see what's happened?"

His sister looked up at him, her dark eyes shining with sudden happiness. "Oh, _sí_ , Manolo. That would mean very much to me. Are you certain you don't mind?"

He rolled his eyes. "I am certain I _do_ mind, after all the hours and all the miles I've ridden already today. But for you, I'll do it anyway. Because you will make my life deeply unpleasant if I don't," he added. His tone was sharp, but she knew it was all for show.

"Sshh. You'll wake the little one," was all she said.

With another greatly exaggerated sigh of self-pity, he got to his feet, strapped on his gunbelt, and headed for the corral to choose a fresh mount. His loyal Mackadoo had already ridden many miles today and must be rested, unlike himself, who had gone without even a meal. Obviously a horse deserved far more consideration than a brother.

Before he had finished saddling the horse, he could hear the unmistakable sound of a group of riders approaching the compound.

"They're home," Tommy said needlessly, from up in his tower perch.

He took off the saddle he hadn't even buckled on yet and tossed it onto the fence rail, then slipped off the bridle and went back into the house, waving to John and Buck as they rode in. "You just saved me another long ride, _amigos!"_ he called to them.

Victoria managed to inch her skirt out from under Daisy's head without waking her, and got to her feet just as John came in.

"John, I'm so happy to see you home safely," she said, greeting him with a beaming smile. "I was worried that something terrible had happened."

He didn't return the smile. Silently, he took off his hat and placed it on the table. He glanced at the sleeping child on the sofa.

"Victoria, you go on and put Daisy back to bed," he said, ignoring his wife's questions.

She was instantly alarmed by his tone. "John, what is it? What's wrong?"

He reached down and took Daisy in his arms, waking her slightly. "Daddy?" she murmured, then fell asleep again, head lolling. He held her out to Victoria, who took her gently.

"Leave her for a few minutes," Victoria said. "She only wants to stay and see her father. It will not take—"

"Victoria, put this child to bed." She opened her mouth to argue, but he was insistent. "I'll tell you everything that's happened as soon as you get back."

* * *

It took a few minutes for her to attend to the needs of the children, but when she left them they were both dry and comfortable and sleeping soundly. She closed the door to their room quietly behind her. Downstairs, she could hear the rumble of low voices from the living room.

Buck and Mano stood a few feet away from John, their expressions as solemn as his. Buck had his hat in his hands, rolling it back and forth nervously.

"What's happened?" she asked, pausing on the top step with her hand on the half-wall. "John, what is it? I know something is badly wrong for you to be acting like this."

He moved closer, and reached up to take her hand and lead her down the steps. Wordlessly, he escorted her over to his chair and urged her to sit. He perched on the edge of the sofa and took her hand in his.

She knew then. Knew from their expressions and the fact that John and Buck were the only ones who had come into the house.

"It's Ben, isn't it?"

John nodded. "I'm afraid so. Blooded Calf and a few of his braves jumped us down in that little arroyo. Had us pinned down, just managing to hold 'em off all afternoon. Ben and a couple of the others, Davis and that fella they just called Big Max, they were separated from the rest of us. By the time the Apaches finally decided they couldn't see us well enough to shoot us, they were nowhere to be found."

"Just figgered they were outta earshot at first," put in Buck. "You know how it is. Well, mebbe you don't, Victoria, but it's like that when it's a fight out away from home. Anyway, we got to lookin' for 'em, and there weren't enough light to really see to find 'em, but when we did, they was all dead."

"Had been for several hours," said John.

Tears pricked at her eyes, but she couldn't say anything. It was hard to get a breath, somehow, but at the same time she didn't feel like breathing, either. The image of the young man, with his rectangular face and wide-mouthed grin and golden curls, flitted into her mind momentarily, but she didn't feel strong enough to deal with it yet. He'd been a good friend to her, almost like a son in some ways. She'd come to love him almost as much as she loved his children.

 _Madre de dios_ , the children. His poor little motherless children, now left fatherless as well.

"If it's any comfort, Victoria," her husband was saying, "it was a clean kill. They weren't tortured. He wouldn't have suffered."

She looked at him blankly. "It may be a comfort later, John," she managed. "But not now. Not yet. And what about Daisy and Johnny, what will happen to them?"

"I see no reason why they can't stay with us until their uncle comes for them."

"That isn't what I meant."

"I know," he said.


	4. The Orphans

Chapter Four:

"The Orphans"

The next few weeks passed like a dismal nightmare.

The ten-month-old baby slept less and cried more. No one could say whether it was caused by the loss of his parents, the tension in the household, or something as natural and normal as teething pain. Whatever the real cause, he would no longer let Victoria out of his sight without setting up a howl. It was sometimes all right for her to put him down while he was awake, but if he suddenly realised he couldn't see her, he would set up a howl that Buck claimed could be heard through ten miles of desert.

If he woke and found her gone, he fussed until she came to check on him or until it became obvious she wasn't going to, in which case the fussing would turn into a wail.

In desperation, she moved his bed out of its usual room and into her own so that he wouldn't disturb the entire household at night.

John was not pleased with the arrangement, to say the least. He was firmly of the opinion that a baby should be taken care of when it actually needed something, and left to cry itself back to sleep the rest of the time. Running to Johnny every single time he made a noise just made him expect that treatment, and therefore cry even more often.

Victoria disagreed.

In fact, she disagreed quite fiercely, and at great length. In the end, she simply put her foot down and said, "Either we move his bed in here, or we take him into our bed." So John gave in, none too graciously, and the crib was moved into their room.

Daisy scarcely seemed to care whether her brother shared her room or not. Indeed, whether she even noticed his absence was a matter of opinion.

At first Victoria thought they would want to be together, so she tried moving Daisy's cot into her room as well. But the little girl would have none of it. She refused the cot no matter which room it was in, and took to sleeping in her father's bed. Even when she was awake she was often to be found there, crying into his pillow.

Over and over again she would demand to be allowed to see her daddy. Eventually, something of the truth of the situation got through to her and she stopped demanding. In fact, she all but stopped communicating entirely. If she had been quiet and withdrawn for some weeks after her mother died, after Ben's death she became a shadowy ghost of her former self.

Physically she was fine. She had a surprisingly good appetite, drank plenty of milk, even played quietly by herself. But she was very much not the Daisy they were used to. Victoria was worried enough to fetch the doctor, but after a thorough examination, his professional opinion was that the child was suffering from nothing but plain, old-fashioned grief.

A few days after Ben's death, Victoria stripped down all the beds and washed the sheets. She thought little of it at the time; just a matter of routine.

But the next time Daisy climbed into bed and snuggled herself into the pillow, all hell broke loose. Instead of the lingering remnants of her father's comforting scent, she found only the smell of soap flakes, bluing, and fresh air. Her screams of rage brought Victoria running upstairs, certain she was being kidnapped or murdered.

She tried to pick her up to comfort her, but Daisy slapped her hands away. "No!" she shrieked.

"What's the matter, little one? Did you fall? Have you hurt yourself?" Victoria stood the girl up on the bed and checked her all over, but she found no obvious sign of injury or damage. She reached out to give her a comforting hug, but Daisy strained away from her embrace. She struck out at Victoria with her fists, and gave her a surprisingly solid kick on her thigh.

"Daisy!" she said, shocked. "Why would you do that? You must never do anything like that again to anyone!"

Daisy stopped lashing out, but the hysterical crying didn't stop. Victoria finally managed to sit beside her and pull her into her lap, where she sat and howled into Victoria's ear. "What's wrong, mija?" she asked, rocking her back and forth. "What's wrong? What has upset you so?"

Wind, hearing the commotion as he passed the window, came up to see what it was all about. "What's the matter, Mrs. Cannon? Did she hurt herself?"

"I don't _think_ so. Wind, would you bring me the baby, por favor?" Because of course Johnny had been awakened by his sister's outburst and was now crying loudly in the next room.

Wind quickly did as he was bidden. As he approached the bed to give her the baby, the scent of the freshly washed sheets hit his nose and sparked something far back in his memory. "Is this the bed that Ben slept in?" he asked. Victoria murmured a distracted assent. "And you washed the bedding this morning, didn't you?"

Victoria looked up, puzzled. "That's right, Wind. You saw me. Why do you want to ask?"

He shook his head slowly, trying to pinpoint the image in his head. "It just reminded me of something. When I was very little, when my mother had to leave me to go and do her work, she used to give me her old shawl to wrap myself in. So I wouldn't miss her, she said. It reminded me of her, and that always comforted me. It smelled the way she did."

She finished the thought for him. "And Daisy has been sleeping in her father's bed because it smelled like him. At least it did until I washed the scent away! Oh, dios mio, poor little girl. Is that why you're upset, Daisy? Because your bed no longer smells like your father?"

By this point, Daisy's howls of rage had turned into loud, gulping sobs. She was far too upset to even listen to Victoria, much less comprehend the question.

Victoria looked up at Wind. "At least I haven't washed his clothing. Go and bring me his shirt from the closet."

"It's worth a try," he said, and stepped towards the wardrobe. He wrapped the shirt around Daisy himself, as both of Victoria's hands were occupied in holding the children, then sat down gingerly on the edge of the bed to wait and see if it was going to do any good.

It took a little while to get through to her, but eventually the heartrending sobs settled down. She pulled the collar of her father's shirt close and buried her face in it.

"That's my girl," whispered Victoria. "I think she will be all right soon. Thank you, Wind. To you and your mother _and_ her shawl."

He nodded and slipped out of the room in his usual silent way.

Baby Johnny settled down almost as soon as his sister was quiet, and was perfectly content to lie on the end of the bed where Victoria put him. Thus freed, she held Daisy across her lap and rocked her gently till she fell asleep. The child made no protest when she was finally tucked in between the offending sheets, but she held on tightly to the old shirt.

Victoria, her work forgotten, sat watching her sleep for a long time.

* * *

Dinner was late and there was a fight going on in the kitchen. Mostly one-sided from the sound of it. All they could hear was a shouted mix of Spanish and English from Victoria, a few strangled protests from John, and the occasional banging of pots.

"What in the world was all that about?" Buck asked as his brother came stomping back into the living room, shaking his head.

John looked back in the direction of the kitchen. "I wish I knew, Buck. I just went in to ask why supper's not ready yet and she bit my head off."

Manolito snorted. "Ah, what did you do to her this time, John?"

"Not a thing. Apparently she had a bad day with the children or something." He sighed. "Oh, I wish their uncle would hurry up and get here."

The other two exchanged a look. Buck cleared his throat and said carefully, "Y'know, John, Victoria's gonna be mighty upset when he takes them kids away from her."

"I know it. And I'm concerned about her, but the fact of the matter is, the longer they're here, the harder it'll be for her to give 'em up when the time comes."

"Mebbe when he gits here, you oughtta … I dunno, see if he'd maybe let her keep 'em?"

"Buck, that is the dumbest idea I've heard outta you in quite a while, and that is sayin' somethin'."

"I don't know, amigo. Buck might have a good idea for once. Ben said his brother has many children of his own – perhaps he doesn't want more. He might think it's a good idea for you to adopt them."

"Yeah, John, it wouldn't hurt nothin' to ask."

John scowled at the pair of them. "I don't want to adopt them, Mano. And I don't intend to ask him, and I certainly don't want either one of you to mention any part of this idiocy in front of Victoria. Those children belong with their family and that is that. They can't stay here."

"Well, we're kinda like their family now. They knowed us a long time now, and they ain't even met their uncle before. You know, that Daisy even calls me Uncle Buck already."

"Half of the territory calls you Uncle Buck," John pointed out. "I heard Pedro say it out in the yard not two hours ago; d'you want me to adopt Pedro, too? Now I don't wanna hear another word about it."

* * *

Early Friday afternoon, two riders rode into the compound.

John walked over to meet them as they reined in and got off their horses. "Hullo," the older of the two greeted him. "You John Cannon by any chance?"

"That's right, and you're Frank Galbraith. We've been expecting you for a while now."

The family resemblance was strong enough to pinpoint his identity right off. Frank was a good deal older than his brother, probably in his middle thirties, and the same basic lines of his face had had time to mature and harden, giving his appearance character that Ben's youthful face had never had the opportunity to develop.

"That's right," he said, as they shook hands. "This is my oldest boy, Tom. He's been excited about the prospect of visiting a real big ranch, haven't you, boy?"

John said, "Well, Tom, why don't you run off and explore the yard? One of the men'll be glad to show you around."

The boy's eyes lit up. "Really? Thanks!" He ran off towards the corral.

"So. Ben around anyplace?"

"No." A shadow crossed John's face. "No, I'm afraid he's not. Why don't you and I, uh, go in the house and talk. Oh, this is my wife, Victoria," he added, as she met them at the door. "Victoria, this is Ben's brother, Frank."

She greeted the newcomer with a look of kind sympathy and went to make fresh coffee. While she was gone, John sat him down and gave him the bad news.

Frank's face went white. He sat stunned until Victoria came back with the coffee, accepting the cup from her in the same bewildered silence. She and John exchanged a look.

"Mr. Galbraith? Would you like a little brandy in your coffee?" she asked quietly.

"Hmm? Oh, sure, if it's not too much trouble. Thank you." He drained the cup without waiting for the brandy or noticing its absence, and held it out automatically for a refill.

Victoria obliged, and told him. "I'm very sorry for your loss, Mr. Galbraith. I thought very much of Ben."

"Yes, he was a good man," agreed John. "Honest and hardworking."

"Yeah, that's Ben, all right. Last time I saw him he was about eighteen, or nearly. He'd been doin' a man's work for two years by then. More than ready to support a family, but Rita's parents wouldn't hear of it. Not till she was eighteen. That's the only reason he didn't go west with us, did you know that?"

Victoria nodded. "Yes. He told me that."

"If he had, he'd probably… Well, no use thinking that way. Water under the bridge." He sighed deeply and looked up at Victoria with a smile that was utterly false. "How are the kids, Mrs. Cannon? I mean, do they understand much of what's happened?"

She shook her head. "Not really. I think perhaps Daisy understands that her father isn't coming back, but it's too much for her to really make sense. They should both be awake from their naps soon if you want to see them."

"I'd love to. Never actually seen 'em, you know. Though I almost feel like I know 'em, Ben bragged on 'em so much in his letters."

"Well, he had every right to. They're wonderful children. We have grown very attached to them, haven't we, John?"

"Oh, yes. Yes. Quite attached."

In a little while, Victoria went upstairs to see if the children were awake. She returned carrying a very spiffed-up Daisy. Her face was washed and her hair was clean and brushed till it looked like fresh cornsilk. She wore the nicest of the dresses that Victoria had made for her – bright blue to bring out the blue in her eyes.

She looked at the stranger with her usual suspicion. When Victoria tried to give her to him, she pivoted and reached out her arms to John instead. He laughed and took her, standing her up on his lap to face her uncle. "Daisy, this is your Uncle Frank. He's your father's brother."

Frank reached out to touch her hand, but she pulled it away from him. "Oh, you're a shy one, huh?" he laughed. "Well, that's all right. You'll get to know me. You're a very pretty little girl, just like a princess in that blue dress."

She wasn't having any of it, but when he mentioned having a little girl only a year or so older than she was, she began to reconsider her position and thawed a little bit towards her uncle. "Will she play with me?" she asked finally.

"She'd love to play with you. You have a lot of cousins out there in California who'd love to play with you. Two girls and six boys."

The word California, often spoken in her hearing, pinged something exciting in her memory. "Caffornia!" she exclaimed. "We're gonna go Caffornia and live there and go see Daddy!" John quickly tightened his grip on her waist protectively as she hopped up and down on his knee, overjoyed at the prospect of finally finding her daddy.

The three adults exchanged a somber look. John turned her around to face him. "No, Daisy, now we explained all that to you. Your father is dead. You won't see him in California or anyplace else." Her face crumpled and she began to cry. He patted her back in an awkward attempt at comfort. "There, there. Don't cry. It won't bring him back."

Victoria threw up her hands. "John, how many times do I tell you? You can't talk to her like that, like she is an adult. She doesn't even know what you're saying. Give her to me." She took the child from him and sat down on the far end of the sofa, cradling her in her lap and speaking softly to her, raising her face often with one finger under her chin to make eye contact.

John gave a sigh. He looked at his guest and lifted his hands in a brief shrug of hopeless resignation.

"Don't worry about it, Mr. Cannon," Frank told him. "It's hard to make little kids understand a lot of things, especially stuff that we can't really understand ourselves."

Frank Galbraith sat alone in the Cannons' living room, nursing his second glass of whiskey and thinking dark thoughts. The bottle of whiskey was Buck's contribution, handed over in a gesture of wordless sympathy.

The dark thoughts were entirely his own. He couldn't help thinking mournfully of his little brother, of course. It was only natural. In some ways Ben had been more of a son to him than a brother. Twelve years difference in age would do that, but Frank and his wife had raised Ben from the time he was eight years old, when their father went off to the war and never came back. Frank had gone, too, later on, but he'd made it home practically without a scratch. Just like he and his family had made it most of the way across the country completely without incident. Somehow he'd always assumed his brother would have the same sort of good luck.

Caught up in his own memories, Frank looked up in surprise as the front door opened. John came in, wiping the dust off himself.

"Whew," he said. "Wind's really pickin' up out there. Blowing sand all over everything."

"Yeah. S'pose we were lucky not to run into anything like that on our way here," Frank said absently.

John sat down in his favourite chair and accepted the glass Frank offered him, though he was not much of a drinker at the best of times. He finished about half of the shot while they continued to talk about the weather.

"I know you're probably not ready to think about plans right now, and I don't blame you for that, but I want you to know that you are welcome to have a couple of my men ride with you on your way back to California. My brother's already volunteered to go. 'Course he's just lookin' for any excuse to spend a little time in California, but I think it's a good idea nonetheless. The children know him, like him. Probably be easier for the both of 'em if he was there."

Frank was silent for a long moment, staring into the fireplace. "Your whole family's fond of the kids, aren't they, Mr. Cannon?" he said at last.

"Yeah, I'd say so," said John, smiling as he thought about little Daisy and her antics. "Not that they're always perfectly well behaved or anything like that, but they're good kids. I think you and your family will be crazy about 'em in no time."

Frank fell silent again. Just as John was about to excuse himself to go upstairs for the night, he spoke up, his voice and expression both serious.

"Cannon, I don't know quite how to say this, especially to a stranger. And there's no way I won't come off lookin' like a heartless monster, so I'll just say it straight out. I can't take those kids."

John stared at him. _"What?_ What do you mean you won't take them? You're their uncle; they're your responsibility."

"I know it. But I said can't, not won't. I'd give my brother's children a home in an instant if there was any practical way to do it, but I just _cannot_ manage it. Not without their parents. I had misgivings when I heard that my sister-in-law was dead, but now that Ben is … there's just no way we can do it."

"You mind if I ask you why not?"

"No. Under the circumstances you have every right to ask." Frank twisted the empty glass between his hands. "You remember earlier when I said that it was gonna kill Esther to hear about Ben? Well, that was just a figure of speech. But I'll tell you in all honesty that it's no figure of speech when I say it would mean the death of her to take on two extra kids, especially ones that young."

John considered that. "Ben did say that your wife had been poorly."

"Mm hmm. She has a heart condition. The doctor thinks it might be from having rheumatic fever when she was a girl. We didn't know about it till after Amy was born. Doctor said she shouldn't have any more children, of course. And we didn't, not for three years. And then, well, you know. Ever since the last baby her health has been a lot worse."

"I'm sorry."

"Yeah. Well, this last winter we got a letter from Ben and Rita, complaining about the blizzards on the prairies and how they envied us our nice weather out in California. Seemed like the perfect solution to all our problems was to have 'em come out and join us. Ben could work for me and Rita could help care for the house and the children. Oh, she would have been a godsend," he sighed. "Of course the kids do what they can to help their mother. Too much, really. But the older boys are out helping me when they're not in school, so they're not around to do much of the heavy lifting. Sure woulda been a help if the girls had come first instead of last."

John nodded sympathetically. "Could you hire a woman to come in and help your wife?"

"We do – when we can afford it. A lot of times, though, it's more a matter of deciding between food and the payments on the business. I know that probably doesn't make sense to you, big ranch like this and all, but—"

He didn't want to say outright that his brother's children would be two more mouths to feed, but the implication was there and John had no trouble recognising it.

"Yeah," he said. "You ever heard the expression 'land rich and cash poor'? I may have a lot of land, but I made payments on it for years. And there were quite a few times we might not have eaten at all if we'd been in any other business but cattle."

"Maybe I went into the wrong business," Frank said, making a lame attempt at a joke.

John laughed. "Time to time I think the same thing myself." Then he grew serious and asked, "So, if you won't take the children, what exactly do you plan to do with them? The nearest orphanage is in Yuma, but the nuns there aren't exactly over-funded, either."

"I don't want them in an orphanage, not if there's any way to avoid it. I had kind of actually thought, well, that you and your wife might consider…"

"No," John told him flatly. "I had a feeling that's the alternative you had in mind. But I'll tell you right now, Galbraith, I have no intention of adopting your little problem just so you can ride on back home with a clear conscience. I'm fond of those kids. I am. And I haven't minded giving them a temporary home when they were in need of it. But I'm not their kin, you are. They're your family and they're your responsibility," he repeated.

Frank nodded, accepting the rebuke. "You're right, they are. And I'm sorry. I know I have no right to ask such a thing of a complete stranger. It was just that your wife seems so devoted to them both, and what with her having no children of her own, it seemed the ideal solution for everybody."

"Not everybody," said John.

"I don't suppose you happen to know some nice couple who can't have children, do you?"

"Not offhand, but I suppose there must be. Is there no other family?"

"Not on our side. I seem to recall some mention of my stepmother having a brother at some point, but I don't think we ever had any contact with him. I'm not even sure I can remember what his name was. Rita had a couple of older sisters, but they got married and stayed in the old country when the rest of the family came here. You surely aren't suggesting we ship the kids to Sweden?"

"No. But I am saying we have to look for any other family before you go looking for adoptive parents for them, or talking about orphanages."

"All right," agreed Frank. "But that'll all take time. Would you be willing to keep the kids with you just a little while longer, till it's settled one way or another?"

John opened his mouth to say no, but before he could utter a word, he heard his wife's voice from the top of the stairs. "Of _course_ we will keep them for a while longer, Mr. Galbraith. As long as it takes."

John gave a weary sigh. He wondered how long she'd been standing there, and how much of the conversation she'd overheard. "Victoria…" he said plaintively, and then said nothing else. There was no point.

* * *

Some of the bright yellow paint and a good deal of the gold leaf embellishment had flaked off the wrought iron crib in the past few decades, but it still looked like a bed created for the children of a rich man, or at least a man who was well on his way to becoming one. Victoria and Manolito had both slept in it as babies. No simple wooden cradle would have done for the children of Don Sebastian Montoya; they would have only the newest, the best, the most fashionable.

By rights it should have come to the High Chaparral several years ago. Don Sebastian had promised that his daughter should have it in time for the birth of her first child, but given the tragic outcome of that birth, the crib had remained hidden away in one of the many rooms of Hacienda Montoya until just a few weeks ago.

The bed and cot in the children's room were being used by Frank and his son for the duration, so Daisy shared the crib with her baby brother. The expected tantrums thankfully didn't materialise, and both went down without a fuss.

"Little angels," Victoria whispered, as she stood with her hands on the railing and watched over them as they slept. She reached out one finger and brushed it along Johnny's cheek, then stroked Daisy's hair. "My little angels. How could anyone deny you a home?"

John opened the door and stepped into the room, moving quietly so as to not wake the children. He hung up his gunbelt safely and sat down to take off his boots. Then he stood and crossed the room in his stockinged feet, standing close behind his wife. His hands rested on her shoulders lovingly.

"Have you ever seen anything more beautiful?" she asked.

"Yes," he said, nuzzling her hair.

Victoria smiled at the compliment, reaching up to touch his leathery face. "I wish I could have given you children," she said.

"I wish I could have given you children."

Her quick intake of breath made him instantly wish he'd never spoken. She turned in his arms and looked up at him with a rapturous expression. "But you still could, John, don't you see? Ben's brother—"

John shook his head. "No. Victoria, don't get your heart set on some ridiculous idea of us keeping these two. Now, he's had a bad shock. He's grieving, not thinking straight. He'll come to his senses before long, and when he does he'll change his mind. You mark my words, Victoria. He'll leave out of here in a few days with both those kids."

"Yes, I suppose you're right. But if he doesn't…"

"He will."

* * *

But he didn't.

Not that he didn't waver; he did, many times. Every time he saw his nephew try to pull himself up to his feet, he'd think, _He'll be walking before long. I'd love to be there when he takes his first steps, since his daddy can't be._ Every time he saw his niece "helping out" or cuddling up with one of the Cannons, he thought of his own daughters and how well she'd fit in. Daisy and her cousin Amy would be like adorable bookends, one dark and placid, the other fair and a little … less placid.

He knew how Esther would cry when he came home without those children. She'd been so looking forward to their arrival. Eight of her own, and she couldn't _wait_ to get her hands on two more, even knowing their mother wouldn't be there to help out. They'd talked about the hardship that would be for her, but they figured with Ben around earning a living they'd be able to hire a woman to help out. But without him… She was more than willing to risk her own health to care for them, but Frank wasn't. Every time he found his resolve weakening, he'd think of his wife's drawn face and the way it would go suddenly grey when she'd have one of her spells. He hardened his heart and stubbornly went on with what he thought was right.

Every day he prayed that Victoria Cannon was as stubborn as she seemed to be, and could talk her husband into keeping those two kids. They were both clearly attached to them, any fool could see that. So the rancher might not be as prosperous as he seemed, but he was doing all right for himself. He could give Daisy and Johnny a far better life than they'd have otherwise. Not just materially, but in more important ways. He could provide them with the best adoptive mother they could hope for, a woman who was made and meant to rear children. A woman who already loved them as deeply as if they were her own.

Frank carefully sorted through all of the scant possessions in his brother's wagon, deciding what he should keep and what he should leave with the children. There were a few letters from back home. Those he handed over to John, so as to provide a starting point in looking for the family members that Frank knew didn't actually exist. All avenues had to be explored, though.

He sold one of Ben's horses – John probably paid him more than the thing was worth, but he accepted the money with gratitude anyway – and hitched the other one to the wagon alongside Tom's. One would ride, one would drive, taking it in turns until they got back home.

Before they left, there were several stops to make. John and Buck took them out to the foot of the mountain, where they'd buried Ben next to his wife. He paid his final respects to his younger brother, then silently put his hat back on, climbed aboard the wagon and headed on into Tucson.

While their supplies were being loaded, John and Frank walked over to the lawyer's office. When they came back, almost half an hour later, there was no trace of their companions at the general store. The loaded wagon was waiting in front, but of Buck and Tom there was no sign.

Unsurprisingly, when they tried the nearest saloon, there was Buck standing at the bar with a glass of whiskey in his hand. Tom stood beside him, shoulders hunched in an approximation of the Buck's way of standing. There was an empty shot glass next to his hand.

John strode over to his brother and caught him by the shoulder. "Buck, just what the devil do you think you're doing? That boy is fourteen years old."

"Relax, Brother John. It's just sarsaparilla."

"In a shot glass?"

Buck shrugged. "Well, it's what he wanted, din't ya, Tom? Makes him feel all grown up to be drinkin' outta a real whiskey glass in a real saloon, I guess. Even if it ain't real whiskey he be drinkin'. You know."

John didn't know, and just rolled his eyes at the foolishness of the pretense. Frank understood, though, and gave his son a pat on the back as he moved up next to him.

Buck looked over at him. "You look like you could use a shot of the real thing, there, _amigo_." He signalled the bartender for refills, and gestured to Frank and John.

"Appreciate it, Buck," Frank said, and held up the glass of Red Eye in salute. "We gotta head out soon, but it sure wouldn't hurt to have just one. Guess it was a little harder than I thought it was gonna be to just sign away every legal right I have to my own brother's kids."

"Still not too late to change your mind, ya know, Frank," John reminded him.

Tom looked up at his father, hope shining in his eyes. "Yeah, Dad, that's right. We'd only be another day later. We could go back to the High Chaparral for the kids and set out first thing in the morning. Buck here will go with us to California, won't ya, Buck?"

"I sure will, Tommy, if that's what you want me to do."

John raised his eyebrows. "Well?"

For a brief instant Frank was tempted. Then he swallowed the whiskey in one gulp and banged the glass down on the bar. "Better be goin' now, son. This time of year it gets dark a little earlier every day, and we wanna get as far west as we can before then." He reached out to shake John's hand. "I can't thank you enough for everything you've done for my family, John. Write and let me know what happens with the kids, all right?"

"I will. And we'll look after 'em, don't worry."

John was hard at work in his office, ledgers and other paperwork spread out all across the desk as he cross-checked contracts and balance sheets.

Victoria rapped on the door briefly and came in. "Sam brought this telegram home from Tucson just now," she said.

He didn't look up from his work. "Hm. Read it for me, will you, Victoria?"

She opened it up and read, "'Confirm Edgar Goss died without issue 1859.' Who was Edgar Goss?"

"Oh, that was Ben's uncle. And according to Frank, the only other relative on that side of the family."

"And Rita has no family in this country at all, Ben said. So that means—"

John put down his pencil and looked up at her gravely. She was entirely too excited about this development. "Well, we don't know that for certain. Her sisters or whatever may have come over later on. We still have to find out."

Victoria shook her head. "No. Ben would have mentioned that to me. Oh, John, this means we're one step closer to being able to keep the children permanently!"

Her stunning lack of logic left him bemused. He got up and put his hands on her shoulders, adopting a patient expression. "Victoria," he said. "We are not keeping those children, no matter what."

"Surely you'd rather keep them than see those two beautiful little niños end up in that orphanage in Yuma. You don't want that, do you?"

"No, I don't especially want them to go to an orphanage. Now, Frank said he wants them to be raised by a nice couple who can't have children of their own. There must be—"

She reached out and twisted one of the buttons on his shirt, and gazed up at him with a cajoling look on her face. _"We_ are a nice couple who can't have children."

John ran his hands down her arms and shook his head. "You know, I've been wise to that little trick of yours for years now."

"What little trick?" she asked, innocent as could be.

"That little trick you're doing right now, playing with my buttons whenever you want something. I know just what you're up to."

"Of course you know, my husband. But you still enjoy it, and I still enjoy it. Is that not so?"

He laughed in spite of himself. "Yes, I do enjoy it," he said. "And I enjoy your company a whole lot more than this paperwork. But it still has to be done, and I can't concentrate on it with you here. I'll see you later, all right?"

"All right," she said, and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. 

* * *

_November 18, 1877_

 _Dear Frank,_

 _We're glad to hear that you made it home safely and that your wife took the news so well. I hope this finds both of you in good health._

 _Received confirmation that your uncle, or rather step-uncle, passed away in '59. He had no children. So far we've had no word about Rita's side of the family._

 _For the moment the children are still with us. Victoria says to tell you they continue well and happy. We have talked to two couples about the possibility of taking them in permanently, but without success. Mr. and Mrs. Summers of Tucson were the unfortunate victims of one of Daisy's temper tantrums and found themselves unable to deal with the situation. In my opinion, a person who can't deal with a child acting stroppy has no business being a parent in the first place. Mr. and Mrs. Richards own a small spread east of Tombstone. They lost their little girl in the measles epidemic this past summer. They seem like a good prospect, but Mrs. Richards really only wants Daisy and not Johnny, although her husband is willing to take both. I'm sure you'll agree with my wife, as I do, that the children shouldn't be separated if such a situation can be prevented._

 _Right now the ranch demands most of my time and energy getting ready for winter. When the season is over, I will have time to investigate further._

 _Yours sincerely,_

 _John Cannon,_

 _High Chaparral._

* * *

The desert nights were turning chilly. Joe Butler threw a piece of wood into the stove in the bunkhouse, and reached for the short piece of log on the table.

"Hey, no. Not that one, Joe. I'm workin' on that." His brother stepped back to the table and laid a restraining hand on the log.

Pedro laughed. "What's that you got there, Sam, your pet log?"

"Nah, I'm just makin' something, is all." Sam turned the log over and showed them the big notch he'd carved out of the top, taking up about a third of the length.

"So what is it supposed to be?"

Sam concentrated on sanding the notch smooth. He answered without looking up, "I'm making a rocking horse for the little girl. Christmas present, maybe."

Joe laughed. "But Daisy don't like horses."

"Eh, this one's just her size. Nothing big and mean about it. And when she outgrows it her brother can play with it."

Pedro frowned. "Yeah, but what if they're not still here by Christmas? The boss keeps looking around for somebody to adopt them."

"They can take it with 'em, then. Whatever family takes 'em in oughtta be glad to have something for them to play with."

"Yeah, and all those clothes Mrs. Cannon made, too," Joe said. "They won't be out much on 'em for a couple of years."

"I don't know why Mr. Cannon don't just let her keep them," Tommy said. "It's gonna break that poor woman's heart to let those kids go."

"Yeah," someone else said. "It's not right to take 'em away from her after all this. Anybody can see how crazy she is about them." There was a general murmur of agreement.

Pedro laughed. "Oh, she's crazy about all kids. And I mean crazy like loco sometimes. You remember that old man's grandson in the desert, Sam?" He rolled his eyes and whistled.

Ramirez, the new guy, asked, "How come she don't have any of her own?"

"She had a baby once," Joe said. "Long time ago. But—"

Sam slammed his hand down on the table. "That's enough outta you guys," he said, raising his voice. "I hear one more word of gossip about the boss, or about Mrs. Cannon, then you can just start lookin' for new bosses to talk about."

* * *

The bedroom seemed larger without the crib taking up most of the space between the bed and the wall. Quieter, too. John looked over at the empty space and breathed a sigh of relief.

"So far so good?" he asked Victoria when she came in.

"So far." She took off her robe and slid into bed next to him. "He's been much better about letting me out of his sight lately. If he wakes during the night, perhaps he will go back to sleep on his own."

"I certainly hope so," said John. "But if he wakes up crying, you just let him cry himself back to sleep for once."

Victoria frowned at him. "Well, I will, John, but if he doesn't cry himself back to sleep, I will get up and go to him whether you like it or not."

"All right, all right. I'm not arguing with you. Just give him time before you do, that's all I'm asking. You've spent the last several weeks jumping up and running to that baby the second he makes a sound, and he's—"

"John Cannon, what else would you say you are doing if you're not arguing with me?"

He looked a bit sheepish. "Well. Now that you mention it, I guess I am arguing with you, aren't I?"

"Yes, you are," she said, and they both laughed.

John patted her hand. "My apologies, Victoria."

"I accept them."

"Sure feels good to have our room to ourselves again," he said.

Victoria picked up on the hint of suggestion in his voice and added a little of her own. "Oh, yes. It does," she said, leaning against his side.

John smiled down at her and took her in his arms, holding her tight against him. He brought his mouth down on hers and felt her immediate response, ardent and loving at the same time. It was the kiss of two people who'd had far too little time together lately.

Their marriage had suffered from a distinct lack of intimacy ever since the baby had taken up residence next to them. A baby of their own, in their room from the day it was born, wouldn't have mattered but for some reason the presence of a foster child was more inhibiting. With him there they were both perpetually on edge, unnaturally conscious of every sound they made, fearful that the slightest creak of the bedsprings would wake him. Lord knows he woke often enough anyway.

But tonight, at long last, they had time and they had privacy and they had every intention of making the most of it.

They broke the kiss finally, looking into one another's faces with love and longing. Victoria lay back on her pillow, reaching one hand up to gently caress her husband's cheek. When she withdrew he followed, stretching out next to her and playing with her hair, twining it around one finger and watching the way it gleamed blue-black in the lamplight. Words of love were murmured between kisses, touches grew increasingly intimate. John reached out to undo the buttons at the throat of her nightgown, and she drew in a shuddering breath.

"Oh, John," she said. "It seems like such a long time."

"Much too long," he agreed, and kissed her again.

She froze suddenly and then pulled away from him, listening intently. "What…?" he asked. Then he heard it. A fussy whimper that had become all too familiar over the last few months. With a sigh of irritation, John lay back and waited for her to jump out of bed and run to comfort the baby.

To his surprise she didn't, at least not immediately. But her body was taut, ready to spring into action the instant the fussing should show any sign of intensifying.

"Let him be," he told her. "He's plenty old enough to get back to sleep on his own."

"Yes, I know, but perhaps it's too soon. He hasn't been able to go to sleep without me there, and this is his first night back in his own room…"

"All right," he grumbled, seeing that she was far more upset than the baby at this point. "Go on."

She was gone only a few minutes, but the lights were out when she returned. She slipped into bed quietly, trying not to wake him if he were asleep.

He wasn't. "Was anything the matter with him?"

"No. He was just a little bit lonely, as I said. He's not used to getting to sleep without me."

"He never will get used to it if you keep this up."

"Oh, I know," she said. "I'm aware of that. But he needs time to adjust, and I don't wish to rush him."

He yawned. "Well, you may have to rush him. The longer you keep running to him like this, the longer it'll take for him to settle into his new home."

"He has no new home, yet."

"Don't think I'm not well aware of it. But he will sooner or later. They certainly can't stay here forever."

Victoria rolled over on her side and gave her husband a hard stare. "Why not, John? Why can't they stay here with us? You never have told me that."

"Well, for a start they've been disrupting the entire household ever since they first got here."

"Households are supposed to be disrupted by children."

Sitting up, he said, "Yes, Victoria, but not _other people's_ children. Look, I didn't mind taking in the Galbraiths when they were hungry and sick and had no place to stay except their wagon. I was more than happy to give Ben a job when he needed one. I didn't even mind you taking care of the children for a little while after he died. But their father's been dead for two months now, and they're still here, getting more and more settled in by the day. I simply did not sign up to be a permanent orphanage."

"You would prefer them to be in a real orphanage, is that it?" Victoria sat up in bed as well, angry now.

"No, I would not prefer them to be in a real orphanage. I've told you that."

"Then where would you prefer them to be, John?"

"With their family," he said firmly. "Their _real_ family."

"And if they have no real family?"

Without hesitation he answered, "Well, if they really do have no family, then they belong with a young couple who can give them a home and the sort of life they would have had with their own parents."

Victoria took hold of his arm. "We could give them all of that," she said, pleading with him. "They already have a home here, and they already know us and love us. It would take very little else for us to be parents to them, John."

"I said young parents."

She bit her lip to keep from laughing. "And are you feeling old since your birthday, my darling?" she teased.

"Not particularly, no," he said with dignity. "I still feel plenty vigorous and energetic."

"I would say you're vigorous and energetic, yes." She rubbed his arm, and rested her head against his shoulder.

John put his arm around her. "But that's now. What about in a few years from now? Victoria, do you realise that if I should chance to still be alive by the time that boy turns twenty-one, I will be eighty years old?"

That gave her a momentary shock. He was more than twenty years her senior, well into middle age when they married. But in all the years since, he hadn't seemed to age very much. His hair had gone a good deal greyer, it was true, but other than that he didn't look much older than he had when they first met. The idea of John growing truly old – or, inevitably, _worse_ – was unthinkable.

She held on to him tightly for a few minutes, taking comfort in the warm, solid feel of his body against hers. At length she said, "You know, if some miracle happened and I were to conceive a child now, you'd be older still. Would you object to that as well?"

"You know I wouldn't, but a child of our own would be a different matter." He was silent for a moment, then said quietly, "Think about their parents, what they would have wanted. Do you really think Ben and his wife would want to see their children brought up by people old enough to be their grandparents? To see them grow up in the middle of a dangerous wilderness where they can't even go out into the yard with any guarantee of safety? Or would they prefer to see them grow up in a town, with other children nearby, where they can go to school and be near a doctor if they get sick?"

"In the first place, John, I am hardly old enough to be their grandmother. And in the second place, I knew Ben far better than you did. I know that more than anything he would have wanted his children to be brought up by people who love them."

John considered. "Yes, I'll give you that. I admit you knew him much better than I. But I knew him well enough to be able to say that there wasn't a single thing in this world more important to him than the welfare of his family. And I don't think this arrangement that you're so set on is in any way the best thing for those kids. It's certainly not the best thing for us, that's for sure."

Victoria stared at her husband in disbelief. She could imagine nothing better for any of them than for the Galbraith children to become members of their family. The little niños could have parents who loved them, and devoted uncles to spoil them. Why, Buck was so much more cheerful now than he had been at any point since Blue had left for his art school and not come home again. He wasn't precisely his old self, but since the children had come his whole outlook had brightened considerably.

And John had so many regrets about his relationship with his son, going back so many years. This would be like a fresh start for him. He'd have another chance with another son, a chance to avoid the mistakes he'd made with Blue. Perhaps Johnny would be more like him, easier for him to understand.

And Daisy – oh, he adored her, that was obvious from the way he smiled whenever she was around. She'd had him wrapped around her little finger for months, from the first time she'd climbed into his lap. He should always have had a daughter. Little girls brought out the best in John, brought out that gentle, loving side of him that Victoria knew so well. A few years ago, they had played temporary hosts to ten orphaned Apache children, including a little girl of about Daisy's age who had been irresistibly drawn to him. He'd been so good with the child, so kind and gentle and patient, that it had hurt to think he'd never have a chance to share that with a little girl of his own. And now there was Daisy, who _could_ be his own if only he weren't so stubborn. So convinced he was right when he couldn't be more wrong.

She wasn't sure what hurt the most; the thought of what her pig-headed husband was doing to himself, or the knowledge that this would almost certainly be her last chance to be a mother. It was all she'd ever wanted out of life, denied her over and over. If he took this chance away from her…

"How can you say that?" she objected. "You know that's the one thing that has been missing from our marriage for all these years. The only thing that has ever made me unhappy."

John nodded, his eyes full of sympathy. He knew.

"And here we have two beautiful children who need us, who have no one else in the world to care for them, and you want to give them away to strangers just because they might be younger or live closer to town. John, you are turning your back on a gift from God.

He blinked. "A gift from God?" he said, completely nonplussed.

"Yes, a gift from God. We were _meant_ to bring up these children. Otherwise, why would their family have become stranded in Tucson? Why would Ben have come to look for work here of all places? Why would both of their parents die within such a short time?"

"Why do I even try to talk sense to you when I know you're just gonna bring up a lot of cockamamie nonsense like that? For heaven's sake, Victoria, all that is is a string of meaningless coincidences and bad luck, not a sign from on high."

She looked at him, defiant. "Then how do you explain their names?" she challenged.

"Well, now ya lost me with that one. What about their names?"

"The names of both of the children. Have you not thought about that before?"

"Daisy and Johnny?" he said. "You couldn't find any more common names if you looked over half the world. Maybe if her name was Mary it'd be more common, but that's about the only way."

Even in the dark he could see the brightness of her eyes as she implored him to understand. "Yes, but her name is not Mary," she said. "It's _Margaret._ I told you that once before."

"So it's Margaret. So is about every tenth girl or woman you meet, at least."

Victoria clasped his hand tightly. "Yes. Including our daughter. Including your own mother. And her brother has the same name as you. These two children who have come into our lives, who need us so badly, have the exact same names our own children would have had. How can you explain that away as coincidence?"

"With names that common, I wouldn't even go so far as to call it a coincidence at all."

"No, because it is a gift from God, as I said."

"Oh, Victoria."

She lay back down and turned to face the wall. "Just think about that, John," was all she told him. "Just think about what I have said."

John sat there in the dark, listening to her breathing. She wasn't crying, but she wasn't sleeping, either.

He worried about her a lot these days. Worried about the way she was overworking herself looking after the children, worried about how distraught she was going to be when they left. Worried about these completely impractical and silly plans of hers about keeping them permanently.

This "gift from God" of hers had taken every single bit of her time and energy from the moment they'd arrived. She'd only been to Tucson once in the past six months, on that nightmare of a trip to take the children to meet some potential adoptive parents. She hadn't even been to Mass since September. She'd spent almost the whole summer with much less ventilation in the house than usual, for the safety of the children. She went to the trouble of feeding them an early dinner, separate from the adults'. She'd lost sleep when they'd woken in the night.

The strange thing was that he'd never seen her happier.

It almost made him wish that he could just give in to her, but there was so much wrong with that idea it was just ludicrous. Anyway, there must be family out there somewhere. What would happen if he went against his better judgment and said she could keep them, only to have an unknown aunt or someone show up wanting them? What would happen if one of the children were to get hurt or sick, hours away from the nearest doctor?

Worst of all, what would happen to Victoria if she were suddenly left a widow with two toddlers to bring up on her own? He lived a very dangerous life, after all. And like he'd told her, he felt fine but he wasn't getting any younger. He should be thinking about grandchildren now, not starting all over again and with somebody else's children at that.

No. It wouldn't work. They'd all be better off not risking it.

John sighed and lay down next to his wife. He laid a kindly hand on her shoulder and leaned over to speak into her ear. "Victoria," he said quietly. "Victoria, I would give a great deal to make you happy, but I cannot give you this."

Victoria shut her eyes and pretended to sleep.

* * *

John handed over the holiday shopping list to the wife of the general store proprietor.

She scanned the long list and nodded. "I think we can handle this. I'm surprised not to see Victoria with you today, Mr. Cannon. In fact, I haven't seen her for ages. I hope she's feeling well?"

"Oh, yes. Yes, she's fine. She's just awful busy these days, what with those children that've been staying with us. She never seems to have any time to herself anymore."

Mrs. Patterson shook her head. "Well, that is a shame. I feel for those poor little mites, I really do. To lose both their parents one right after the other like that. Your wife is a good Christian woman to take them in the way she's done. Maybe you'll find them a nice new home before long."

"I hope so, Mrs. Patterson, and thank you. I'll be back after while to pick up the order."

He took the mail with him and headed over to the saloon. He exchanged the usual pleasantries with the patrons, then took his beer over to an empty table in the corner to read the mail. It was the usual mix of business letters and personal correspondence, plus holiday greetings from his mother-in-law, Annalee's stepmother. Two letters with Minnesota postmarks stood out from the rest.

Curious about what news he was about to find, he opened those first. The letters couldn't have been more different, though they contained essentially the same information.

One writer used a lot of exclamation points and sentimental rhetoric to convey her distress at the deaths of the young couple, and to say how she wept for their two tragic orphans. She went on to refer to Rita Galbraith as a "tragic orphan" as well, having lost her mother a year or so earlier and her father a couple of years before that. The poor girl had been left all "alone in the world except for her husband". The statement did answer his question, but John wasn't sure if that were the point or if it was simply more indulgence in histrionic grief.

The other wrote with a businesslike precision of which John approved highly. She expressed her sorrow succinctly, mentioned her great regard for the couple without undue sentimentality, and then addressed the question of other relatives.

" _At your behest,"_ she wrote, _"I spoke to Pastor Franzon at the church attended by the Lindstroms. He confirmed what I had believed to be the case. Rita was the only one of the Lindstroms' children to have immigrated with them to the United States, and he has no address for the ones who remained in Sweden. They were completely without kin in this part of the world, though they had many devoted friends."_

John sighed as he put the letter back in its envelope. Well. So that was that. It was to come down to his decision after all.

He sat by himself for quite some time, occasionally taking a sip of the beer. Once in awhile someone he knew would come over to say hello and then quickly retreat, rebuffed by his curt response.

Generally speaking, he'd never been one for putting off anything that needed to be done. He believed in quick, decisive action.

Obviously the most sensible action would be to get up from this table and go and talk to every clergyman he could find. Surely one of them would have some idea of a family who would be happy to adopt two fine, healthy children. That would be the best thing for everyone in the long run.

Why, then, was he still sitting here in this bar trying to talk himself out of doing what he knew was right?

He thought about what life had been like at home the last couple of weeks. He and Victoria were barely speaking to each other these days. Ever since the night they'd had it out about their conflicting viewpoints, they hadn't argued about the children at all. In fact, they hadn't argued about _anything._ They were coolly polite to one another, almost the way they had been during the chilly first days of their marriage.

On the surface everything was so polite, so civil. But the anger was there, all right. Oh, was it ever! It simmered beneath everything like a coal vein fire, ready to flare up in an instant if the wrong word was spoken.

Sometimes they went to bed angry with one another, made love angrily, and went to sleep angrier still … all without a cross word between them. Other times their eyes would meet and the sadness of the situation would overwhelm them both, leaving them with nothing to do but hold each other in a silent embrace, a momentary break in that impenetrable wall of cool civility.

For the past two weeks, John had been trying to make himself believe that things would improve once the situation was settled, one way or another. Now he knew that wasn't going to be the case. If there had been relations willing to take the children, Victoria would have been left heartbroken, but she would have coped. She always did. But he had no faith that she would be able to cope with her own husband imperiously taking away the children she loved and giving them to complete strangers.

In a moment of rare clarity, he realised that she would never forgive him. The relationship between the two of them would mend in time, but the betrayal would always be there, for the rest of their lives.

So, for one of the few times in his entire life, John Cannon found himself unable to choose the rational decision over the emotional one. He got to his feet and left the saloon, not even seeing his own brother as he passed him in the doorway.

He stepped into the lawyer's office and tossed the two letters onto the man's desk. "Edd," he said, without preamble. "You know those two kids we've had staying with us out at the Chaparral?"

* * *

The excitement of Christmas Day left both children exhausted, and the adults in not much better shape. When Daisy actually fell asleep on her little rocking horse that Sam had made for her, Victoria carried her upstairs. It was still before bedtime, but she thought the child would sleep through the night anyway.

When she came downstairs, she found her family assembled in the living room, ready to exchange their own gifts now that the children were out from underfoot.

John thanked her for the new shirt she'd made for him, then ruined it by adding, "I'm surprised you even had time to sew it."

"My time is not so completely burdened by the children as you seem to think it is," she said.

She started to undo the string on the flat package that was her husband's gift to her, but John reached out a hand to stop her. "No. Not yet. Save that till the very last."

With an indifferent shrug, she laid it aside.

When every last gift had been exchanged and commented on, he indicated that Victoria should open hers. She picked it up again and carefully undid the wrapping.

Inside was a thick sheaf of papers, folded in thirds with only the blue backing sheet visible. She looked up at John. "What is this?"

"Just read it," he told her.

"Ohh," breathed Manolito, who had figured out what the legal papers must mean without even seeing them. Buck, who hadn't yet, watched the proceedings with a curious expression.

Victoria unfolded the papers and scanned the first sheet quickly. Her breath caught as she read the words _Application for Adoption._ She looked up quickly, not quite daring to believe it.

"Oh, John," she said. Then, because all other words failed her, she repeated it. "Oh, _John."_

He reached across and laid his hand on her knee. "Well, it's not official yet. You still have to sign several places, right below where I've signed. Then we'll take the papers in to Edd in a few days so he can file them. Shouldn't take more than a few weeks to make it final, and that's just because it'll take the circuit judge that long to make it back to Tucson."

"You did this for me?"

"Well, you're hard to buy for," he said, trying to keep his tone light and not really succeeding. "You've already got everything you could possibly need. So I couldn't think of a better present than your … son and your daughter."

She moved next to him on the sofa and threw her arms around him, crying tears of sheer joy. She rained kisses onto his face and neck. "Oh, I love you!" she cried. John laughed and hugged her, rocking her back and forth. His eyes were suspiciously shiny, too.

Buck reached over and patted his sister-in-law on the back. "Congratulations, Victoria. Mano, what'd you think o' that? We's gonna be uncles!"

"We _are_ uncles, compadre _!"_ Manolito exclaimed. He jumped to his feet and pulled his best friend up from his seat and into his embrace. They were loudly exultant, hugging each other and laughing as they clapped one another on the back. "Tío Manolito," he said in awe. "What do you think of that?"

He let go of Buck and reached down to give Victoria a hug. "I'm very happy for you, my sister. John … well done, amigo."

"Hey, John," Buck said. "I feel like celebratin'. You mind if we go on out and tell the boys?"

"I don't see any reason why not," John told him, without raising his eyes from his wife's face.

When they were gone, Victoria said, "Tell me the truth, John. You couldn't bear to see them go, either, could you?"

He thought about how nice it had been having them around today. He pictured the baby with his new wooden blocks, alternating between playing with them and putting them in his mouth, and pictured Daisy with a stick of candy in her mouth, rocking on that little horsey for what seemed like hours.

"Well, I guess when you get right down to it I really couldn't," he admitted. "But I'll tell you one thing, Victoria. Now that they're gonna be staying, I want you to hurry up and hire a woman to help out around here. You used to have help in the house, after all, and you'll need someone to look after the children when you go to church or go into town."

She looked thoughtful. "I think it's time I should take Daisy to church with me."

"If you think you can get her to sit still in the buckboard, not to mention that long Mass."

"Mass is only twice a month. Besides, she will have to obey her mamá." She thrilled a little as she said the word for the first time. They were going to have a wonderful life with their children.


	5. The Prodigal Son

BOOK TWO:

"PRODIGAL SON"

(Blue - 1877-78)

Joe was on guard duty at the gate when he saw a lone rider heading towards the compound. His pace was unhurried, so Joe kept an eye on him but saw no need to raise the alarm.

As the rider drew closer, Joe narrowed his eyes. There was something familiar about the way he sat that horse, something that reminded him of a particular riding stance he hadn't seen in a while.

Something _very_ familiar.

Joe's face split into a grin under his dark moustache, and he shouldered his rifle and walked a few yards out to greet the newcomer.

"Well, I'll be," he called. "Look who finally decided to drag his carcass home after all this time. Where you been, Blue-Boy?"

Blue Cannon reined in beside him and dismounted just a touch stiffly, no longer used to being in the saddle for hours at a time. The two old friends slapped each other's backs in a gesture that was almost, but not quite, a hug.

"Been all over the place, but mostly California lately. Hey, Joe, how ya doin'? Where is everybody?"

"Well, your folks went to Tucson yesterday morning, but they ought to be back later on today. Buck's in Mexico tryin' to negotiate for a few cattle before the first drive of the season. I think Mano's around here someplace, though."

As they walked through the compound the older hands, the ones who had been there for years, caught sight of Blue and either ran over to shake his hand and slap his shoulder or called out their greetings. The commotion brought Manolito around from the side of the house where he'd been mending a stirrup, the tool still in his hand.

He began to smile the second he saw Blue, but he greeted him nonchalantly. "Hola, Blue. You're a sight for sore eyes, amigo."

"You too, Mano. How you been?"

"Ah, much the same as always. Your father and Victoria will be sorry to have missed being here to greet you when you came home, but it will be a surprise for them to find you here after all this time."

Still talking, they strolled up to the house together and went inside. Blue accepted a glass of tepid lemonade from a round, middle-aged Mexican woman Manolito introduced as Rosario, and sat down on the step to look around. The interior seemed dark after several hours of riding in the bright sunlight, but he could see well enough to tell that little had changed in the familiar room in the two years he'd been away from home. It felt longer than that to him, and yet in another way it seemed as if he'd sat here only yesterday.

Manolito asked him about his travels, and he was just about to answer when a series of dull thumps sounded from very close by. He looked around for the source of the noise. For a moment Blue wondered if he was still sunblind and seeing things. But no, there actually was a baby sitting underneath the table next to the stairs, happily banging a couple of wooden blocks together.

"Hey," he said, pointing. "Whose baby?"

Manolito felt the Devil take hold of him. "That baby?" he said, with excessive innocence. "Oh, that – he is Victoria's."

Blue's face went slack. Swallowing hard, he finally managed to say, "Victoria's. Huh. Well. That's, um…" He walked over and knelt down in front of the baby. With one hand he reached out and touched his cheek. Johnny looked up at the stranger, puzzled, then his mouth opened in a grin that showed off all eight of his tiny teeth. Blue laughed in sudden delight. "Hey," he said. "Hey, little fella. You know who I am? I'm your big brother. You know, we all waited a long time for you to join this family. Here. C'mere and let me get a good look at you, all right?"

He picked him up and carried him over to the sofa, then sat and balanced him on his lap. He brushed his fingers over the still-sparse golden curls and looked down into the clear blue eyes. "Guess he must look like a Cannon, cos he sure don't look like a Montoya," he said, looking up at Mano.

" _Sí_ , but in personality he is sometimes very much the Montoya. Let us just say he has a way of getting his own way."

"Yeah, I bet he does. Say, how come Victoria went to town without him? Can't see her goin' off and leaving her baby at home."

Manolito shrugged. "Well, she protested the whole time, but there was urgent business in Tucson and her presence was required. And let's just say that little Johnny here, he is not a traveller."

"Johnny? His name is Johnny?" Blue felt a kind of sinking sensation, right around his middle. In a slightly hollow voice he said, "So. Big John's finally got a Little John, huh?"

Watching him, Mano had the faintest twinge of guilt over his little joke. Not enough to stop it, of course, but it was enough to dampen his enjoyment a little. "So it would seem," was all he said.

Blue looked back down at the baby on his lap. "Well, little brother, John Cannon, Jr., you got a _big_ name to live up to, and I don't envy you one little bit. No, I don't, not the least, tiny little bit. How old's he, Mano? 'Bout a year or so?"

"Mm, just about a year. His birthday was at the end of December."

"Can't believe I have a brother who's a year old already. Guess I been out of touch for longer'n I thought." He sat holding him for a long while, grinning as Johnny played with the ends of his bandana and offered him a spit-covered wooden block.

Mano watched the two of them play. He raised one eyebrow, and remarked, "You seem to know quite a bit about babies, _compadre_."

Distracted by the child in his lap, Blue completely failed to notice the note of playful innuendo. "Yeah, I've known a few. Little Johnny's somethin' special, though, ain't he, Mano?"

"He is, yes. Or so my sister keeps telling me."

"Yeah, she would. And I bet ol' Don Sebastian's happy about finally gettin' a grandson, huh?"

"Ah, sadly, my father died before he ever got to see the grandchild he wanted so much."

Blue's face radiated sympathy. "Oh, Mano, I'm sorry."

" _Gracias_ , Blue." Manolito waved away any further attempts at commiseration.

Eventually Rosario came back for the baby, and Blue, having surrendered him only reluctantly, got up to put his belongings away. He was already upstairs when he heard Mano call to him to wait. "What is it?" he called back, pushing open the door of his old room.

Then he fell silent as the sight of the transformed bedroom met his eyes. It was neat and tidy, of course, but Johnny's crib held pride of place now. The bed, which had been moved over to make room, held a neatly arranged row of toys all lined up against the pillows. There was a stack of diapers and a tin of talcum powder on the dresser. Even the curtains at the windows had been changed to a bright yellow floral pattern, just right for a baby's room.

Mano appeared behind him and touched him on the sleeve. "Sorry, _amigo_. I should have remembered to tell you."

"Nah, it's all right. Shoulda figured, really. Baby's gotta have a nursery after all, right?"

" _Sí_. You can use Buck's room while he is busy in Mexico."

Blue nodded. He opened the door of Buck's room and tossed his saddlebags onto the bed. "Hey," he said. "I just thought of something. If Buck's at the Rancho Montoya on business, how come you're here? I mean, with your pa bein' dead, shouldn't you be the big _patrón_ now?"

"Ah, now that is a long story, my friend. A long story which will have to wait until later, because unless my ears deceive me, that sounds like your father and Victoria arriving home from Tucson."

"Well, I hope they're ready for a surprise," Blue said with a grin.

"I hope everyone is."

* * *

Victoria hopped down from the buckboard almost before it stopped moving. "Blue!" she cried, pulling him into her arms with an enthusiastic welcoming kiss.

Blue held her tightly for a moment, then let her go. The two of them stood at arms' length, regarding one another fondly. "Sure is good to see you again, Victoria. You too, Pa," he added, glancing over at his father.

John stood back out of the way, watching his son in silence. He held out his hand to Blue. "It's good to have you home, son."

The statement was flat, but his voice was raspy with suppressed emotion. There was a time when Blue wouldn't have picked up on that, but he'd grown and changed over the years, just as his father had. This time, when he looked into the heavily lidded blue eyes, he caught a glimpse of the things that John felt but had such difficulty expressing.

Victoria stood watching them, lips pursed. They were so much alike in their stubbornness! They loved and missed each other, but neither would ever say it. "Your father has missed you very much," she told Blue. "And so have I. You must promise never to leave us again!"

"Well…"

"Have you seen Johnny?" she asked, before Blue had a chance to say anything else. She reached out to take the baby from Rosario as soon as she appeared, cuddling him and cooing to him as if they'd been separated for a month instead of a day and a half, and then held him up for Blue's inspection. Her face beamed with maternal pride.

"Yes! Johnny and I are good friends already, right, little brother?" He smiled and reached out to touch his little hand, and the baby grinned back at him. "Boy, that was some surprise to come back to, lemme tell ya!"

John let out a booming laugh. "Well, don't forget you haven't even seen the other half of the surprise yet." He turned around and scooped Daisy off the seat of the buckboard. It was a thousand miracles she'd managed to stay still that long without doing anything worse than standing up by the edge.

Victoria touched her on the sleeve. "Daisy, this is your big brother, Blue. We've told you about him before."

Daisy flattened herself against John's chest and gave Blue a stare of deep suspicion, her habitual dislike of strangers compounded by jealousy of all the attention he was receiving.

Blue stared back at her with his mouth gaping open, momentarily stupefied. He managed to take in the sight of a three-year-old girl in a red dress and long Indian moccasins, with a wilting red ribbon in her hair, but his mind took a minute to wrap itself around the fact that the child was somehow supposed to be his sister.

"Hey," he objected, when he finally regained his capacity for speech. "Now, the baby's one thing, but I _know_ I ain't been gone that long!"

"Oh, for Pete's sake," John said. "We just signed the adoption papers yesterday. Didn't Manolito tell you?"

Blue turned back to look at Mano with a slight frown. "No, I guess he left that part out."

Mano took a step back and adjusted his face into an expression of angelic innocence. "Ah, it was a joke, Blue. The sight of your face…" He laughed, and the angelic expression was replaced with a positively devilish grin.

Victoria began to scold her brother in Spanish, and they argued all the way back in the house.

"Well, I guess some things never change, anyway, huh?" Blue asked.

John shook his head. "Nope," he said. "I oughta have time before supper to show you some of the things that have changed. Or have you had a look around already?"

"Nah, I was waitin' for you to get back."

His father made no reply to that, but he seemed pleased to hear it. He put Daisy down and told her to go on in the house. When she didn't move, he swatted her lightly on the rump. "Go on, scoot," he told her, watching her fondly as she ran off after Victoria.

He straightened up and turned his full attention to Blue. John had progressed to the point where he could finally just about admit, at least to himself, how much he loved those two youngsters that fate – and Victoria – had foisted upon him. But at the same time, he believed that no matter how much he cared for them, he would never have the same relationship with them as he'd had with Blue. No matter how well they turned out, what kind of people they grew up to be, a part of him would always wonder if it was because of his influence or just the Galbraith coming out in them. Blue was different. He was a Cannon, born and bred. This boy was his flesh and blood, his and Annalee's. No two men could be more different, both in personality and in outlook, yet for all that there was a bond between father and son that could never quite be broken.

He stood regarding the boy, taking in all the changes that two years away from home had wrought. At first he saw little difference: his pale eyes were still as clear and blue and guileless as they'd been when he was five, and he still looked so much like his mother that even after all these years it hurt a little to look at him.

And yet, there was something about him that was discernibly not the same, something that owed little to the minor surface changes. His dark blond hair had become slightly sun-bleached, the way it did when he got in the habit of being outdoors without a hat, but there was nothing surprising about that. His new clothes, in deep shades of earthy green and brown, didn't really suit him, but they certainly didn't change him. No, it was something that went deeper than that. Something about the way he held himself straighter, the way he looked his father in the eye with more confidence than he'd ever shown before. Yes, that was it. For the first time in his life the boy seemed to have an air of quiet confidence about him, born of the necessity of looking out for himself, making all his own decisions.

John realised, with a sense of shock, that his son was no longer a boy. Well, of course, that was only to be expected. After all, he had to be almost thirty … no, he corrected himself, a little past thirty. Time did tend to get away.

He saw Blue looking at him with a slightly puzzled expression and he shook himself out of his reverie. He draped one arm loosely around his son's shoulders and guided him away from the house, talking with perfect ease about the new barn and corrals, the cistern on the roof that fed the new water pump in the kitchen, and the smithy he'd finally managed to put in after all these years.

* * *

Blue was suitably impressed by it all.

He looked around the half-timbered adobe barn with interest. "It's sure not like the old barn that Grandpa built in Kansas," he said. "Hayloft's quite a bit smaller, for one thing."

John snorted. "You spent more time daydreaming up in that hayloft than you did on your chores."

"I heard plenty about it, too," Blue said, giving his father that impressively steady look again. "You know, I was thinkin' not long ago that that's the first place I ever tried to draw. I spent about half a summer up there once with my school slate, just seein' what I could come up with."

"I sure never knew that."

"I don't think even Ma knew that," he admitted, with a slightly sheepish smile. "Great place for a kid, though. I feel sorry for Johnny and the little girl, growin' up without a big ol' hayloft, or a rope swing like the one Buck strung up from the rafters."

"They'll survive," John said drily, then added, "I think the west porch would be a better place for a swing. When they're bigger."

"So, how'd you end up with them, anyway?"

"Oh, it's a long story. Victoria'll tell you all about it, but the short version is that they belong to a young widower we took on last year. He was killed by Apaches, and we ended up with the children."

Blue hesitated for a moment before asking the obvious. "How come you never let me know about all this?"

John stared at him. "And just how would we do that?"

"Well, you had my address. At least since last fall."

"Nope. Last thing we heard from you was that you were tired of San Francisco and you'd write when you got settled. That was, what? May, June? Haven't heard a word since except from your grandmother, saying she'd had a letter from you a few months back."

Blue chewed his lip as he thought it over. Admittedly he'd turned out to be a poor correspondent once he'd left St. Louis – he'd done a lot of travelling, and he'd seen so much and done so much that he simply didn't have the words to describe it on paper – but he _knew_ he'd written to them just a few months ago. Pages and pages, telling them all about his new job and the people he was staying with.

"And here I was startin' to get worried cos I hadn't heard anything back." Looking his father straight in the eye, he said, "Pa, I _did_ write to you last fall. The letter musta gotten lost in the mail or something. I know I may go quite a while between letters, but I'd never leave you all to worry for nearly a year. You gotta believe that."

John reached out and gave his son's shoulder a reassuring squeeze. "Don't take it so hard, boy," he told him. "It's unfortunate, but it's not your fault. Letters have gotten lost before and they'll get lost again. And frankly, I'd rather see you in person, anyway."

Blue grinned at him and breathed a sigh of relief. "Me, too, Pa," he said.

* * *

Dinner that night was a festive affair. Even on short notice, and after that long drive back from Tucson, Victoria managed to prepare an elegant meal in honour of her stepson's homecoming. She even baked him his favourite pie.

There was certainly no absence of conversation. Blue, naturally enough, had more stories to tell than anyone else. His family had already heard some of the things he had to tell about his art lessons, but they enjoyed hearing them again – even if Victoria was the only one who understood half of what he was talking about.

"People really want to buy these … caricatures, you call 'em?" John asked as they retired to the living room with their coffee. He shook his head in amazement. This whole art thing was beyond him and likely to remain so. It was obvious that the boy had a real talent, and he was overjoyed that he'd made such a success of it, but if he lived to be a hundred he would never understand why anyone would ever want to pay perfectly good money for something that he'd never be able to see as anything more than ugly drawings.

"Oh, yeah. Lots of people. When I was in San Francisco for a few weeks, I made a living just doin' that. I'd sit down in a park or on a sidewalk and start to draw, and the next thing I know there's people wanna pay me to draw 'em. And I've sold a whole bunch to use for advertising. That's what I've been doing the last several months, actually. Drawing a bunch of pictures to use to advertise a flour mill. 'Course I do regular work in the mill, too, but the drawings are kind of an important side job. Mason – that's the mill owner, Mason D. Adams – he says that they really bring in a lot of extra business."

"Now, where is this at?" John wanted to know. "Someplace in California, you said?"

"Yeah, little town called Modesto. 'Bout … oh, about a hundred miles or so from San Francisco, but the two places couldn't be less alike. Modesto's down in the valley, and it's got lots of rivers, lots of wheat farms. Lots of families, too."

Victoria picked up on the wistful tone in his voice. "I suppose you'll miss it very much for a while," she said sympathetically. "And all of your friends at the mill."

Blue swallowed. He looked down at his hands as he twisted them uncomfortably in his lap. He spoke without looking up. "Yeah," he said in a quiet voice. "There's people I'll probably miss. It's just … well, see, the thing is, there's still … well, I'm not…" He trailed off miserably, unable to get the words out.

"You're not here to stay," John said for him.

He shook his head. "No. Not right now, anyway."

For a long moment none of them said anything, and Blue was reminded just how accurate the term "deafening silence" could be. He risked a glance at his father, and lowered his eyes again quickly. John wasn't yelling, but his stony expression was just about as bad as he could have imagined.

Finally Victoria, ever the peacemaker, said, "As much as we hoped to have you home for always, Blue, at least a visit is much better than nothing. _Isn't_ it, John?" She reached out and grasped her husband's arm insistently, silently pleading with him to agree, to make peace and not spoil whatever time they might have with Blue.

"Pa, it's just for a little while, I promise," Blue said. "I'll be home for keeps before ya know it. It's just that … well, I got responsibilities back in California that I just can't leave. Not yet."

"Well, I did try to raise you to be responsible." John was calm enough, but his voice held a note of decidedly bitter sarcasm, evidenced by the faint emphasis on the word _try._ "I did hope you'd feel a little more responsibility towards High Chaparral and your own family than to this Mason Adams and his wheat mill, though."

The accusation of disloyalty stung, and Blue was instantly riled up. "It's nothin' to do with the mill, Pa. I may owe Mason a lot, but I know it's nothin' compared to what I owe you. And it's nothin' compared to what I owe to … well, somebody else. There's somebody back there waitin' for me, and I can't leave her behind and that's all there is to it."

The last words tumbled out in a rush, and Blue heaved a sigh of relief, glad to have it over with at last. He looked his father straight in the eye, still defensive but with a hint of a smile that he just couldn't manage to suppress.

"Ahhh," Mano said with a knowing grin, and clapped his old friend on the shoulder.

Victoria was suddenly all smiles. "Oh, Blue, you have a girl? What's her name?"

"Katie. Kathleen Adams Wheeler. She's Mason's daughter, and she's … I can't even describe her. She's too special. Actually, this trip was her idea in the first place. We were all talkin' one night about the railroad line to Yuma finally opening up, and she thought I oughta come out here and see you all in person."

"Well, I guess we owe her that much, at least," said John.

Blue nodded. "Yeah, I guess so. 'Course I thought it was a real good idea, myself. This way I can pick up Ma's ring and locket while I'm here. Gonna be needin' those before long," he said, through a grin that was so enormous he could barely get the words out.

They all reacted at once. Manolito gave his shoulders a squeeze and said, "Hey, compadre, _exelénte_! Congratulations." The severe expression on John's face instantly turned into a smile, and he echoed Mano's hearty congratulations.

Victoria jumped to her feet. "You're getting _married?_ Oh, Blue, how wonderful!" she exclaimed, and leaned down to hug him.

"So, when do we get to meet her?" John wanted to know.

"I don't know, exactly. I mean, we'd thought about late May for the wedding, and of course you're all invited—"

"Well, I certainly hope so!" his father interrupted, laughing.

"You wouldn't mind comin' all the way out to California? Even though it's the busiest part of the year?"

"Not if that's what it takes."

Mano, predictably enough, mostly wanted to know what she looked like. "Is she pretty, your Katie?"

"Pretty? Mano, you've never seen anything like her. She's the prettiest girl I've ever seen. She's got strawberry blonde hair, and eyes that are sort of a real deep blue. And she's got this little bow mouth that kinda turns down just at the corners, you know? Not like a frown, cos she usually smiles most of the time. Even when she's mad it always looks like she's about to smile. She's the sweetest girl I ever met. And smart! She's just as smart as she is pretty."

Having finally found the nerve to tell his family about the woman who was keeping him anchored in California, Blue couldn't stop talking about her. The words poured out of him like someone had pulled the stopper from an over-full bathtub. To hear him tell it, Katie was the personification of the ideal woman: she was so beautiful she'd put Helen of Troy to shame, she was the kindest woman who'd ever walked the earth, not to mention the most sensible and intelligent and interesting. The others looked at one another and tried to hide amused smiles; they were all well aware that when a person was in love, he tended to exaggerate his beloved's qualities to an outrageous degree, and Blue was proving no exception.

He finally trailed off of his litany of her virtues and gave a little shrug. "Like I said, I can't really describe her," he said, in all seriousness.

"That seems like an awful lot of words to not describe someone, son," teased John.

Victoria soothed the waters, as usual. "She sounds wonderful, Blue," she reassured him.

"She is. You'll love her."

John looked thoughtful. "Did you say her last name was Wheeler?"

"That's right. Mrs. Wheeler. She's a widow."

"And how old is this Widow Wheeler?"

"About my age, give or take a few months. And I better tell you, she's got three boys from her first marriage. That's part of the reason we're stayin' out in California for a little while, till we figure out what's what. The two older ones are in school most of the time, and Katie don't … well, Tucson's too far away to go to school every day."

John's face took on an increasingly dour expression. He was decidedly less enthusiastic about this news than his wife, who gave a gasp of delight at the prospect of three more children joining the family.

Victoria saw no insurmountable problem regarding school, and she was immediately full of plans. "I taught school for a few weeks, you know that. You can tell Katie that she and I can teach all of the children together. How old are her boys?"

"Nine and seven – or nearly seven – and the youngest is three."

"Well, see? There is no problem, then. We can teach the older ones now, and then in a couple of years we can start from the beginning with the younger boy and with Daisy. You tell her to get lesson plans from their teacher before the school year ends, and we'll be all ready for next year. You'll tell her that as soon as you get back?"

Blue stood and gaped at her for a moment. Then he shook his head and said, "Yes, ma'am. I'll tell her that." He knew better than to try and argue with her.

* * *

Once the excitement began to wear off a bit, the fatigue from Blue's long journey started to catch up with him. Barely able to keep his eyes open long enough to say goodnight, he made his excuses and headed off to bed.

Mano smiled as he watched his sister's face, full of excitement and happiness.

Then he looked at his brother-in-law, who seemed anything but cheerful at the moment, and the smile faded. Best leave them to sort it out, he thought, and got to his feet. "I think I shall go outside and look at the moon," he told them. _"Buenas noches."_

After he left, Victoria took his place on the sofa, nearest the lamp, and picked up her knitting. John sat beside her, staring into the fireplace, lost in thought. For a long time there was silence between them.

"It's good to have Blue home again," Victoria said finally, not looking up from her work.

"Yes. Yes, it is. Even if it's only to be for a little while, it's better than nothing." John tried to remind himself to think of it that way. At least now he knew that his son was alive and well and settled someplace steady. He'd spent more than a few sleepless nights worrying and wondering, even before his letters had tapered off and then eventually stopped altogether.

"He seems very changed, do you not think so?"

"Mm hmm."

"Older, perhaps? More…? _Como se dice?"_

"More mature?"

"Yes, that's it. He seems so much more mature."

"Well, it may have taken awhile, but yes, he does, doesn't he?" He couldn't keep the note of pride out of his voice.

Victoria scowled at him. "How can you be critical of your son when he has come home for the first time in two years?"

"I wasn't being critical, Victoria. It was a compliment. I was trying to say that he went away a boy and—" He shook his head, refusing to get drawn into the old argument. "Never mind."

She jabbed her knitting needles furiously into the ball of yarn. "I disagree he went away from here a boy. And he has taken care of himself for two years, and now he is taking care of Katie and her family and he is certainly a man! Surely you agree with that."

"I see no reason not to," he said tiredly. "It's what I said in the first place.  
Anyway, I certainly hope so, cos it sure sounds like this fiancée of his is gonna be the one to wear the pants in the family."

"Why do you say such things? I think Katie sounds wonderful."

"She _sounds_ like she has Blue wrapped right around her finger," he said, thinking about her insistence on keeping them all in California because her boys were used to a "real" school. For years, he'd wanted Blue to marry, thinking a good, sensible wife would be just the sort of steadying influence the boy needed. But a woman who kept him away from his home…!

Victoria sat regarding him with narrowed eyes. "All good wives have their husbands wrapped around their fingers," she said.

He snorted. "Well, I walked right into that one, didn't I?"

"Yes, you did, my husband." She gave him a smug grin and latched onto his arm. "I think I'll check on the children and then go to bed. Are you coming up?"

"Nah, you go on. I'll be up later. Victoria," he said, stopping her just before she reached the second step. She turned to look at him expectantly. "Why do you suppose he didn't wanna tell us about her first thing? I don't understand that."

She smiled. "Oh, that's very simple, John. He's very much in love, and part of him wants to shout it from the top of the highest mountain. But there's another part that wants to hold her to himself like a secret, and not have to share her with anyone. Not quite yet. Telling us makes it real, and ordinary."

* * *

Blue sat on a barrel by the side door, whittling in the way he only did when he had something on his mind. It was only February, but the warmth of the afternoon sunshine felt good on his face. Nearby, his new sister played by herself in the sand while Victoria kept one eye on her and one eye on her laundry.

"Victoria, is there anything the matter with Pa?"

She looked up from her washing. "No, I do not think so, Blue. Why? Does he not look well to you?"

"Yeah, he looks fine. It's just that I've been home for five days now and he ain't yelled at me once." He smiled to show that he was mostly joking.

"What did you expect? He's _very_ happy to have you home, you know."

Blue nodded. "Yeah, I guess. Sure seems that way. Thing is, it's not just me. I've hardly heard him yell at anybody. I mean, he don't act like a different person or anything. Somebody goofs up and he sure lets 'em know about it. He's just … I dunno, calmer."

"You're right," Victoria told him. "He has been trying to take things more calmly ever since his illness. He still worries too much and he still sleeps too little, but he tries to hold his temper as much as he can. Besides, the children would be frightened if he yells, so he tries not to. Most often he succeeds." She smiled as she looked over at Daisy.

Blue turned to watch the little girl as she built up a sizeable pile of sand in front of her. The task seemed to require all of her concentration.

"He sure does seem fond of those two. Especially her."

Victoria looked at him with a beaming smile. "Oh, he loves them both very much. Just as I knew he would."

"Yeah," was all Blue could say.

It was beyond strange for him to see his father being, well, somebody else's father. There was still a faint trace of awkwardness between John and the children, but it was obvious how much affection he had for them. Last night he'd sat and held out his arms to Johnny, encouraging his few toddling steps by saying, "Come to Papá."

 _"Papá"_ , for heaven's sake! The Spanish pronunciation and everything. If Blue had ever tried calling him anything other than plain, simple "Pa", he'd have laughed at him for being pretentious. And now here he was calling himself "Papá" and not minding it a bit, just because that was what Victoria wanted.

Blue grinned in spite of himself. That might be funny, but it was nowhere near as funny as watching how besotted he was with Daisy. Oh, he was reasonably strict, even with her – if she interrupted the adults, she got a scolding, and an outburst of temper got her promptly sent to bed – but he interrupted himself to respond to her childish babblings, and his eyes lit up when she was near. That giant of a man, who'd intimidated Blue his entire life, had been brought to his knees by a tiny girlchild he hadn't even wanted in the first place.

"Sure takes some getting used to, having kids in the family."

He had spoken to himself, barely aware of having said the words out loud, but Victoria heard him. "Yes, it does. But it's worth it. These children have brought us so much joy. And now, thanks to your Katie, we shall have three more children around to bring us joy, as well. And then soon, perhaps, there will be more, no?"

Blue looked down at his feet and tried not to blush. "Maybe," he said. "Hope so."

"Oh, yes. You'll have many children, Blue. And you will be a wonderful father. Kind and gentle and understanding."

"I hope so," he repeated. "But I haven't been very wonderful at it so far. Well, being a stepfather, I mean. Or future stepfather, anyway."

"Katie's children dislike you?"

"Not till just lately. They used to like me real well, right up to the time I proposed to their ma. Now they sorta pretend like I'm not there most of the time."

"That's terrible. But you will win them over soon. I'm certain of that."

"Wish I could be."

Victoria dropped the garment she'd been scrubbing back into the washtub and dried her hands on her apron. She took a seat on the bench next to the door, where Daisy would be in her direct line of sight while she talked to Blue. "Don't worry, Blue," she told him. "If they liked you before, they must still like you."

He looked up at her. "That's what Katie says, too. That they still like me as a friend, but they're just so mad right now they don't know it. Mason says they're just kids and they'll get over it soon enough."

"Yes, I think they are both right," Victoria told him soothingly. "They'll like you once more, once they forget their anger."

She gave her stepson a wry look. It certainly wasn't just children who behaved that way. Blue had been almost twenty when she married his father, for all intents and purposes a grown man. And yet he had bitterly resented her presence at first. His grief for his mother had still been fresh, and the last thing he wanted was a stranger, no matter how well-meaning, trying to take her place. Oh, it hadn't taken her all that long to make friends with him – though it had seemed an eternity at the time – but to this day he still disliked it if she overstepped that boundary and tried to act like a mother to him.

"How long has it been since their father has been dead?" she asked.

"Three years. Aaron was just a week old when he was killed – Katie said she wasn't even up and around yet after having him. At least _he_ still likes me," he said ruefully.

"Of course he does. You must be the closest thing to a father he's ever known. Nothing else matters to him."

Blue smiled as he thought about the little boy. Aaron was a pretty good kid, all things considered. Even more of a handful than Daisy, but far less prickly in personality. "I, uh, I had thought about maybe adopting him one of these days. I mean, Katie and I talked about it a little. Like you said, I'm really the only pa he's ever known, and it'd just kinda make sense. Guess that's the latest fashion in the Cannon family, huh?" he joked.

"Well, it's a very good fashion. I certainly approve of it very much. Only Aaron, though?" she asked, turning serious again. "Not his brothers?

Blue shook his head. "No. I don't want to take their pa's name away from them. He meant too much to them, even if they were little when he died."

"Well, perhaps that's the problem," she said. "Perhaps they don't like the idea that you will be Aaron's father, and he will never know about his real father."

He thought it over for a moment. The boys _had_ been around when he and Katie had first mentioned the idea of adoption, but he hadn't thought of them paying much attention to the conversation. They seldom took much interest in adult matters.

"Maybe. I guess that could have something to do with it." He reached up and scratched his head. "Either way, uh, well … either way, I think I'm kinda startin' to get a better idea of what you went through, all those years ago. Not just a surly stepson, but just … you know, coming second. Harder than I thought." He glanced over at her and gave her just a hint of a smile, then looked down at his feet in embarrassment.

In a quiet voice she asked, "Blue, do you think that Katie loves you?"

Blue looked up quickly. "I know she does, Victoria," he said. There wasn't a trace of doubt in his voice.

Victoria smiled. "Well, then, you are not second. Not in her heart, not where it truly matters."

"Thanks. I mean, not just for the advice, just … well, for everything, I guess." Abruptly, he got to his feet and said, "Well, reckon I've been lolly-gagging around here long enough. Better get back to work. No sense bein' the one to make Big John forget about not yelling so much, huh?"

He turned to go, hesitated for a second, then blurted out, "I don't think Daisy and Johnny could have a better mother." With that, he disappeared around the corner of the house.

Victoria sat there stunned. Then she hugged herself, a smile of triumph on her lips, and got up to go back to her laundry.

 **Author's Note:** _And thus begins Blue's section. Sorry for the lack of Uncle Buck, but he and his favourite nephew have an entire chapter to themselves next time. :)_


	6. Blooded Uncle

**Author's Note:** _Well, Uncle Buck gets to have his nephew all to himself for a while. Warning: this chapter contains a major tearjerker moment towards the end._

Uncle Buck finally made it home from Mexico a couple of days later.

"I think we'd better check out the North Range this afternoon, see how the graze is holding out," John was saying as he got up from the table. "Victoria, you can expect us home in plenty of time for supper."

They were just buckling on their gunbelts when they heard the familiar sound of cattle being driven into the yard and Buck talking to his horse as he tied him up out front. As a family, they went out to the porch to greet him.

"Uncle Buck!" shouted Daisy, and ran to him. Strangely, she had little trouble pronouncing the word uncle, but his name came out more like "Bock".

Laughing, he picked her up. "Hey, Li'l Bit. You glad to see your ol' Uncle Buck? I sure be glad to see you. Victoria, I hope you still got some hot food left over. My insides is just about to meet up with each other, and I ain't sure they're gonna get along too good."

Blue stood slightly back from the others, just inside the doorway. "Uncle Buck," he said quietly.

Buck looked up at the sound of the familiar voice. His face grew solemn, but his eyes widened with hope. "Blue-Boy?" he asked. "Is that really my little Blue-Boy?"

For a moment they just stood looking at one another, as if they couldn't believe their eyes. Then Buck gently let Daisy slide down his leg and walked away from her, the child instantly forgotten as he moved to clasp his nephew in his arms.

"Hey, Uncle Buck," Blue said when they finally broke apart.

Buck reached out and put both his hands on the tops of Blue's shoulders, shaking him gently. "Blue, where the heck have you _been?_ We all been worried sick about you! All this time and not a word outta ya," he scolded, and then pulled him into another tight hug.

As usual, Victoria was right there ready to defend him. "Buck, don't scold him. Blue has been just as worried about us as we were about him. His letter got lost in the mail and when he didn't hear back from us he came out to see for himself that we were all fine."

Buck opened his mouth to reply, but was distracted by Daisy tugging at the knee of his pants. "Uncle Buck, Uncle Buck," she whined.

With a laugh, he picked her up and gave her a smooch on the cheek. "Hey, li'l Daisy, what you think o' your big brother here? Huh?" She just buried her face in his chest and didn't say a word.

Blue snorted. "Yeah, that about sums it up, all right."

"Here, Sis. Now, you go on to yore daddy or yore papa or whatever you gonna call him," Buck told her, handing her over to John. His brother didn't seem overly thrilled at playing nursemaid in the middle of a workday, but Buck paid no attention. He just draped one arm around Blue's shoulders and led him into the house. "Now, you jus' tell me what all you been up to while I have some vittles."

"He's got the whole day to tell you all about it," John said. "Now, I have to—"

"I do?" interrupted Blue, surprised that his father was willingly letting him have the rest of the day off to spend with Buck.

"Yeah, might as well. Now, as I was saying, I have to get back to work while there's still daylight, and I want to hear about those cattle. What kind of deal did you work out with Don Domingo? Did he come down on the price any?"

Victoria set the bread and butter on the table in front of Buck and disappeared back in the kitchen to scrounge up some leftovers for him. He stuffed a big hunk of bread in his mouth before he answered John. "He come down on the price a whole lot," he said with his mouth full. "A whole lot. Ya might even say they was free."

"What?"

"Free. No dinero. Didn't cost ya nothin', John."

"Well, I just can't wait to hear how you brought this miracle about, little brother," sighed John. He sat back down at the head of the table. Before he could even open his mouth to ask for another cup of coffee, Victoria set a cup down in front of him. "Thanks, Victoria. I have a feeling I'm about to need this."

Buck swigged down some of the hot coffee and refreshed himself with a few bites of food before explaining. "See, John, other night me and Uncle Dom got into a friendly little card game. Well, you know, we'd kinda been drinkin' a little, and jus' havin' a little fun. 'Fore I knew it, we was playin' double or nothin' for the price of the herd."

John's face went white with horror. "You bet my cattle in a double or nothing poker game with a _professional cardsharp?!"_

"Well, it's all right, John. I won."

Blue exploded with laughter, pounding his fist on the table. Now _this_ was really like coming home. "Hey, Uncle Buck, that's the greatest thing I ever heard!"

"It's the stupidest thing I ever heard," muttered John as he got to his feet. "And don't think you've heard the last of this, either."

"Oh, I don't think that at all, brother mine," Buck said once John was safely out the front door. "Not at all. Now, Blue, I wanna hear everything you been up to since ya been gone."

Blue smiled happily and launched into his long tale once again. This time he began with Katie Wheeler.

* * *

Blue had fallen back into ranch work with an ease that surprised himself. It was quite different from mill work, and his body was no longer used to spending more hours in the saddle than out of it, but he was young and strong and this was what he'd been doing almost since he could walk. Still, it felt good to get home every evening.

Even though he was tired, he stabled his borrowed roan mare properly, giving her food and water and a thorough rubdown. No horse could have asked for more, not even the palomino he'd been so fond of. Soapy had either been sold during his absence, or he'd been one of a large number of horses who had perished in a flash flood some time back. Neither Sam nor Joe could tell him which with any certainty, and somehow he didn't like to ask his father.

As he led the mare – like most of the High Chaparral stock she had no name, so he'd got into the habit of calling her Roney – into the barn, he found someone else in there.

The someone else was a black-haired youth of nineteen or twenty, clad in fringed buckskin. He was brushing down a big bay gelding while the animal fed. Blue knew immediately that this could only be Wind, the half-Pawnee boy he'd heard about. He had been in Mexico with Buck and Pedro and a few of the others.

"Hi," Blue said, as he stabled Roney next to the gelding.

The boy looked up and gave a brief nod of greeting.

"You must be Wind."

"That's right."

"Thought so. Nice to meet you. I'm Blue Cannon."

Wind went on with his brushing. "I know who you are."

Blue, trying to make friendly conversation, asked, "So, what kind of a name is Wind, anyway?"

He looked up from his work and studied Blue intently for a moment or two, trying to work out, as Blue was doing, which of the stories about this legendary figure were true. "It's my name," he said finally. "What kind of a name is Blue?"

"It's a nickname."

"I never heard of Blue being a nickname for William."

"Well, I reckon there's a lot of things you ain't heard of," Blue said, slightly needled.

Wind took the comment seriously, not the least bit insulted. Philosophically he said, "No doubt. I suspect that's true of all people, though. No one can know everything. Not you, nor me, nor Sam, nor even your father."

"Don't let him hear you say that."

The boy almost smiled. "Mr. Cannon's a good man," he said. "He may not know his limitations, but he's capable of recognising the truth when he hears it. He respects the man who tells him the truth instead of what he wants to hear." When Blue remained silent, he went on, seemingly at random, "Sam tells me that you're leaving again in a few weeks."

"Yeah, that's right. Back to California for a while. Well, a little while, anyway." He only narrowly stopped himself from telling him about Katie's misgivings. What business was it of his? Blue had no reason to justify himself to this boy, a hired hand who hadn't even been here that long, and he was annoyed at himself for the impulse.

Wind finished with the horse, and moved to put the grooming implements neatly away in their place. "Your family will miss you," he said, with his back to Blue.

Blue, still slightly peeved at himself and at this … this know-it-all _kid,_ snapped, "I expect they will. And I'll miss them, too, but I don't know what any of it's got to do with you."

Wind stood up and turned back to Blue with a slightly puzzled expression. "I make no judgments," he said. "Just stating a fact. They missed you while you were gone, and they'll miss you again."

With that, he turned to go, leaving Blue standing there staring after him, unable to decide just what to think of him. Neither friendly nor unfriendly, strange and irritating and yet interesting in his own way. He would be easy to dislike, and yet, somehow, Blue had a strange feeling that he might actually end up liking him if he stayed long enough.

He had no idea as he watched him go that he had just met a man who was to become one of the best friends he would ever have in his life. He had also just met his one and only cousin, but neither of them would ever know that.

* * *

Bright and early Saturday morning, Buck and Blue ate a hearty breakfast before setting off together. They had no destination in mind, no specific plan to follow, just a vague idea to take a few days off and "go adventurin'" as Buck put it. After all, the two of them had always been close, so what could be more natural than to spend a few days together before Blue had to go back to his _other_ family? That, too, was Buck's term, but the bitterness with which he said it was concealed enough that Blue, in his excitement, missed it entirely.

Most of the hands had already left for the day, leaving only the members of the family in the yard. John, who had been surprisingly agreeable to Buck's idea of a trip, was mostly indifferent to their leave-taking. He had Daisy up with him on his horse, held firmly in the saddle in front of him. Victoria held onto her little girl's hand, fussing like an overanxious mother.

"Well, just be careful," she was telling her husband. "Don't forget how much she used to fear horses."

"Now, Victoria, does she _look_ afraid? If these children are gonna grow up on a ranch, that means that they'll spend their whole lives on horseback. You know perfectly well the sooner she gets started learning the easier it'll be."

Laughing, Blue and Buck rode up on either side of them, said a quick goodbye – Buck reaching out to tousle Daisy's hair fondly with one gloved hand – and rode off together, leaving them to their disagreement.

Blue turned back for a final look as he left the compound. Victoria had stepped back out of the way, and John rode very slowly around the yard, one hand on the reins, the other gripping his daughter.

He looked, strangely enough, every inch the doting father.

Blue shook his head in disbelief. He dug his heels into the roan mare's sides and caught up with Buck. "He sure does play favourites, huh?" He was as far from an impartial observer as it was possible to be, but his tone held no rancour.

"What?" Buck turned around to look, then turned back to his nephew with a puzzled expression.

"Daisy," said Blue. "Pa's just crazy about her."

Buck grinned. "He is that. I knowed a long time ago he was gonna give up an' agree to keep them kids eventually, jus' cos he was so crazy about that little gal. But that don't mean he plays favourites."

Blue glanced back over his shoulder again. In the receding distance, John was still riding slowly around in circles with the child propped up in front of him. "Oh, yeah? When's the last time you saw Big John do that? Or any of the other things he does with her?"

"Well, lessee. How old are ya? Cos I remember him learnin' you to ride jest like that, ever' day if he had time, with your mama worryin' even worse'n Victoria. Everything he does with Daisy, he did with you first. And a lot more, probably, since you was a boy. You ain't got no call to be jealous, little Blue," he teased.

Blue didn't actually blush, but his face and neck grew warmer than the February morning warranted. "Hey!" he objected. "Uncle Buck, I ain't jealous. I wasn't even thinkin' about me. It's just that he seems to have a whole lot more time for that little girl than he does for Johnny."

"Well, you might have a point," said Buck. "But that's just cos she's at a more interestin' age right now than Johnny. Soon's he gets a little older, he'll get his turn. After all, Johnny'll have to learn to work cattle jus' like the rest of us. Who else is gonna teach him that but your daddy?"

Blue shook his head. "I just don't think it's gonna be the same, Buck. I can just feel it."

"Feel what?" asked his uncle, frowning.

"I don't know, exactly. Just … well, I feel sorry for Johnny, that's all."

"You sure do like that little baby brother of your'n, don'tcha, Blue?"

Blue looked down at his horse's ears, not wanting to meet the question in his uncle's eyes. He knew that if Buck didn't sense it for himself, he was never going to be able to really explain his misgivings to him. That instant sympathy he'd felt the second he'd heard the baby's name. Those misgivings should have gone away as soon as he found out that both kids were adopted, and that Johnny's name was nothing more than pure coincidence, but they hadn't. If anything, they got stronger every time he saw his father with Daisy.

"Yeah, I like him a lot," he said finally. "I sort of feel like he really is my brother, you know? Something about him just … I dunno. I can't explain it. But I know what he's got ahead of him, and I hate to think about it. I mean, I was the only son and heir my whole life, and I never measured up one day of it. Not one single day. All right, so maybe Johnny don't have to be raised to take over one day. Maybe it'll be easier for him because he's just the younger son, but—"

"Like me," Buck interrupted. "Mebbe he ain't s'posed to live up to anything."

Blue glanced over at him, feeling half-ashamed of himself. After all, this was the only man in the world besides himself who could ever really know what it was like to spend his whole life living in John Cannon's shadow. Funny how easy it was to forget that. Buck let everybody forget it. If it weren't for the occasional blow up every few years, you'd never know it bothered him at all. He figured most of the time it probably didn't.

"Maybe. You and me know all about what it's like to be overshadowed by Big John, but at least neither one of us ever had to be _Little John."_

Buck broke into a laugh. "Well, thank the good Lord for that," he said. "Least thass one ad-vantage we got. 'Course, Johnny got one advantage over us, too, Blue." His nephew gave him a questioning look. "He come along right about the time John's finally startin' to mellow in his old age."

"Mellow in his old age!" Blue hooted, and it was quite some time before they could look at one another without bursting into laughter.

* * *

They stopped in Tucson just long enough to pick up a few supplies and have a quick drink, then headed off in a vague northwesterly direction.

When asked about where they were headed, Buck's only reply was, "I ain't thought about it just exactly. But I reckon mebbe we might jus' keep on headin' there till we get someplace we like."

Sometimes they talked, and sometimes they didn't. Even after their long separation they were close enough that their silences were the comfortable sort which didn't need to be filled with empty chatter.

They had a rather late midday meal on the banks of a watering hole on somebody's ranch. Buck couldn't remember who owned it, just that it had changed hands a year or so back.

While they enjoyed their lunch of fried bacon and the inevitable coffee, they dangled makeshift fishing poles in the water. They had no real expectations of catching anything, which they didn't, but it seemed like a good idea. It was like the few trips they'd been able to take together when Blue was a boy, on those occasions when his mother had been persuaded that he was old enough to go and his father had reluctantly agreed that he could be spared from his chores. Every one of those few times was burned into their memories forever, memories of sunlight and laughter and absolute freedom. The war had put an end to that; by the time it ended Blue was grown, expected to work as hard as any other man. He couldn't be spared to skylark around with his uncle. Oh, they'd had their share of outings in Arizona, but they'd mostly either been working, riding the range together, or else they'd been with Manolito in some cantina someplace.

"Hey, Uncle Buck?"

"Hmm?" Buck drowsed in the afternoon sunshine, hat over his eyes, letting the good food and the motion of the fishing pole in his hand lull him to sleep.

"Is this the sort of thing you and Mano get up to when you go off together?"

"Yeah. 'Course they's more whiskey and more women, but we'll get to a town sooner or later. Then we'll have us a high old time!" He pushed the hat up with one finger, gave his nephew a sly sort of look. "I don't suppose you learned to like a drink any better while you been gone?"

Blue shrugged. "Well, I ain't exactly joined the temperance league or nothing like that," he said.

Buck recognised the evasion for what it was, but he wisely chose not to make an issue of it. He'd long since realised that Blue was never going to be much of a drinker, any more than John was. He just disliked the taste too much to get any enjoyment out of it. A completely alien concept to Buck, but there it was. Hell, the boy hardly even liked coffee that much.

He laughed. "If I thought ya'd gone and done that, Blue-Boy, I'd disown you. Well, leastways I'd pour whiskey down your throat till ya _learned_ to like it."

"You would, too! I remember the way you got that temperance lady there in Oracle drunk on cough medicine and brandy," laughed Blue. He pulled his fishing pole out of the water and wrapped the string around it, getting his things together so they could get back underway again. Turning more serious, he added, "Nah, don't worry, Buck, I'll drink with ya. Now, the women, though…"

Buck waved away the objection. "Don't worry none about that, Blue. I always knowed you'd end up as much of a one-woman man as your daddy."

Blue studied his uncle's face thoughtfully. "I bet you would be, too, if you ever made up your mind to settle down with anybody."

"Me? Nah. For one thing, that'd mean settlin' down with somebody one o'these days, and I like women too much – and too little – to ever do a fool thing like that."

When they were on their way again, Buck started feeling chatty, especially about his days on the trail. He'd still been in his teens the first time he'd taken off by himself, and he often said that he probably wouldn't ever stay in one place till he was buried there.

He had many, many stories behind him. Several of them he'd told before, though always with some of the more salacious details omitted. Both of Blue's parents would have skinned him alive if he'd mentioned any of those things in front of the boy when he was younger.

The stories about the women he met were more explicit, and somehow even more romantic in a strange, melancholy sort of way.

There was his absolutely chaste courtship of Annie Clark, later known as Mrs. Simmons, the girl he'd loved and left behind because he thought he'd never be good enough for her. And a lovely, sassy southern belle called Lavinia … something or other, a girl he hadn't loved but had almost married because she was expecting another man's baby. He still swore he would have gone through with it if she hadn't been shot to death first.

He didn't tell him about the young Pawnee widow who was Wind's mother for the simple reason that, like a lot of his women, he'd mostly forgotten all about her.

He'd been welcomed into her tribe – who were so desperate to make peace with the white settlers that they frequently gave their women to them – and he'd been welcomed into her bed. For two or three months he'd lived in her family's lodge with her and her young son, and during that time he'd sworn he would love her forever. He'd made promises to her that he'd meant at the time, then he'd ridden away from her for what he called a quick trip back home, and never come back. For a few years he'd thought about her off and on, thought about going to see her again, and then the war and the passage of time had so thoroughly blotted out the memory of what they'd shared that when their son, in all innocence, had mentioned her name, Buck had experienced only the faintest twinge of familiarity.

The differences in the stories about Dodge City were more disturbing. He'd often talked about all the fun he'd had back there, and clearly the place had a strong draw for him. Their ranch had been in northeast Kansas, between Kansas City and Pottawatomie, yet he'd made the trip to the opposite corner of the state a few times a year. He'd made it sound like so much fun that Blue couldn't wait to get old enough to go with him. Now, though, it sounded like a place he was glad to have missed. Like Tombstone, only worse.

He'd had good friends there, or at least good drinking buddies, and the marshal had been an honest man, but in between all the good times he'd seen too many dark alleys and too many dark ends.

Buck talked till he was hoarse, then said, "Be gettin' dark soon. Better start lookin' around for a good place to camp." When they found their good campsite, he let Blue cook while he doctored his throat with several swigs of whiskey. He didn't bother offering it to his nephew, and Blue didn't ask for it.

"Your turn," he croaked.

"My turn for what?"

"You got a bunch more stories you ain't told nobody yet. All that long trail out to California. And I seen St. Louis a coupla times – ya musta done somethin' real excitin' there."

Blue shrugged. "Not really. Especially not compared to you, Uncle Buck. I mostly just drew and painted."

Buck wasn't buying it. "Now, I jest flat don't believe that. See, I know you, Blue-Boy. You got that urge to go and jump in an' rescue anybody ya think needs rescuin', no matter what the cost to you or anybody else. And I jus' don't believe you ever gonna stop that habit till you're six feet under. Mebbe not even then."

"Um, I guess ya could say that I rescued a girl that got her purse stolen. 'Course it's not like I got her purse back or anything like that. I just helped her find a policeman and walked her home after."

"Right gentlemanly," laughed Buck.

"Hey, if you're just gonna laugh…"

Buck held up his hands. "I ain't laughin', Blue. Promise. I'da done the same thing."

"Nah, you woulda caught the purse snatcher."

"Well … probably. Done all the hard work an' left Mano to walk the girl home and collect the reward."

"I got a kiss as a reward. Well, on the cheek," he admitted, and they both laughed. Blue's eyes lit up suddenly as he thought of just the sort of story his uncle would be interested in hearing. "Hey, did I tell you guys that I was a witness at a murder trial?"

Buck looked duly impressed. "No foolin'? No, I reckon I never heard about that till jus' now. They hang him?"

"Well, I hope not, seein' as I was tryin' to help get him off. It was just an accident, see? There was this fight in a saloon – I wasn't in on it or anything like that – and this one fella kept hittin' this other one, and the second guy finally belted him one. Well, it knocked him down, and he hit his head pretty hard on this brass thing on the bottom of the bar, and he died a couple of days later. So they went around trying to find everybody who might have seen it, cos this fella's brother kept making out he was murdered. Only I seen it, and I knew it was just an accident."

"Well, good for you, boy." He beamed at him. The day a Cannon would let anyone be wrongly accused of anything was a day the world would never see. "I knowed you wouldn't never let nobody down if they needed help. You just a natural rescuer."

Contrary to Buck's fond belief, Blue had only a handful of anecdotes that might count, in a mild sort of way, as "rescue" stories. But he had seen a lot of sights in a lot of cities, so he began to tell him about a few of those.

Buck sat listening with an indulgent smile on his face, not enthralled, but not bored, either. Blue got a good look at his uncle's sleepy face and realised that cities weren't really his uncle's idea of a good time. Oh, he liked them on occasion, as long as those occasions were brief and spread out over a period of several years, but on the whole he was more interested in the wide open spaces and the people he met there. And Buck's idea of a sight-seeing tour generally consisted of seeing the sights to be found in the local saloons.

Realising that, Blue came to an abrupt halt in the middle of a description of a particularly hilariously overdecorated house on Pennsylvania Avenue in Denver. This was never going to interest Buck any more than the technical stuff he'd learned from his art teacher would. He was an adventurer, a lover of cheap booze and cheap company, and that's what he liked to hear about.

"Aw, never mind," Blue said. "It's nothing but kid's stuff."

Buck shook himself to full wakefulness. "Huh? What is?"

"Just about every story I've got to tell, that's what," Blue said with a scowl. "Kid's stuff. Stuff that don't matter." After two years spent telling stories to strangers who listened breathlessly to his exciting stories of life in the Arizona Territory, it was a letdown to realise that he had no interesting stories to tell the only audience that really mattered to him.

"Why?"

"Because it—" He broke off with an irritated sigh and started again. "They just ain't your kinda stories, Uncle Buck."

Buck folded his arms and stared at his nephew. Truthfully, most of them weren't, but he didn't care. As long as they were together again, Blue could have been talking about a barely remembered fairy tale he'd heard when he was four and he would have enjoyed it.

"Why ain't they my kinda stories?" he asked.

Blue thought about it, struggling with a concept he couldn't quite put into words. "Well, they're just … well, you're too … aw, you just don't wanna hear about stuff like that, is all. You don't wanna hear about how ol' Hannibal Clay and his young wife had twin babies, or about the rich folks in Denver and their bad taste."

"Blue, I reckon I want to hear 'bout anything you got to say." Buck was no more articulate than his nephew – no more articulate than any Cannon, truth be told – but he figured that should get the point across.

Nope.

The boy had a headful of steam and a conviction that he was right, a combination that always meant he wouldn't listen to anything or anybody.

"All the stories you got are about life and death – exciting stuff. You know, I haven't faced life and death since I left the High Chaparral. All I've done is draw pictures and paint pictures and sell pictures, and grind up a little wheat now and then. What can I tell you? I'm not even a cowboy anymore, just a second-rate artist."

Buck laughed. "Well, least that puts ya one up on me, cos I'm nothin' but a third-rate drifter."

"At least you're a _real_ drifter. That's more'n I'll ever be."

The laugh disappeared instantly. He moved in close and took his nephew roughly by the arm. "You listen to me, Blue-Boy, and you listen good. The last thing I _ever_ want you to be is any kind of a drifter, real or otherways."

Blue, taken aback by that raspy, deadly serious voice, swallowed before he asked, "Why not? It's good enough for you."

"Yeah, it's good enough for me," Buck said, voice even rougher than before. "But it _ain't_ good enough for you. When you was just a baby, I used to think about how good it'd be to have ya ride with me when y'got old enough. How much fun we'd have, jest me an' my nephew, ridin' out together. And then 'fore you was very old at all, I stopped thinkin' 'bout that."

"How come?"

"Cos you ain't a drifter, that's how come. You ain't like me, any more than yore like yer pa. An' the kinda life I had, well, that ain't no kinda life for a man like you. You too good for it. You got better things to do and better things to be."

* * *

Early the next afternoon they came across a town, or at least what was left of one.

Longreach had been a mining town once, nearly a decade ago. It had been a middling sort of success until the copper vein played out. There were towns like it all over Arizona, full of either skeletal buildings or the charred remains of them. Not quite a ghost town yet but there wasn't much life left, either. At any hour of the day, what life there was congregated around a sorry-looking general store and the one remaining saloon.

Still, it was a town and it had a saloon. They'd promised themselves a high old time and they were determined to have it.

The locals were about as prepossessing as the town itself, and just about as friendly. The bartender served them without a word of greeting. He didn't even respond to Buck's joke about their order: "I'll have a whiskey with a beer chaser. Now, my friend here, he wants a beer with a whiskey chaser. Don't you get 'em mixed up there, y'hear?"

When the man turned his back on them silently, they looked at one another with raised eyebrows.

"Well," Blue said.

"I don't get it. That just kills 'em in Tucson. They even laugh about it in Nogales. 'Course, they never get the drinks mixed up there, cos—"

"…All they got's tequila, anyway!" they finished together. They both laughed and clinked glasses.

Buck took a few sips of his beer and then set it down with a splash. He grabbed Blue's arm excitedly. "Hey, hey, hey … Blue, you ever seen this? Fella in Tubac showed me this. Watch this," he said, and dropped the shot of whiskey into the beer.

Blue's eyes widened as the beer suddenly foamed up and over the top of the glass. "Hey, that's great, Uncle Buck! How's it do that?"

"No idea. Go ahead, try it yerself," he urged.

"How's it taste?" Blue wondered doubtfully.

Buck offered him a taste of the resulting mixture. Blue took a sip and shook his head, screwing up his face in disgust. The bartender wordlessly wiped up the mess on the bar counter and turned away from them.

"I think I'll stick with plain beer," Blue said, and pushed his whiskey chaser towards his uncle.

"All right."

The drinks were perfectly adequate for Buck's admittedly low standards, but nothing else in the saloon was. There wasn't enough business in the daylight hours to have any girls working there, there wasn't a faro dealer or a piano player, and there weren't enough customers for a poker game or even a good fight. Occasionally he tried to make the bartender pay attention to him or better yet, actually crack a smile, but he had little success. By the time the lengthening rays of the evening sun began to stream through the doors, they were both pretty well convinced that their "high old time" wasn't destined to be all that high.

Still, they could drink and they had each other's company, so that was enough for the most part. Blue hadn't been good and drunk in a long time – probably since the last time he went to Tucson with Buck and Manolito. By the time they gave up and left, not long after dark, he was already regretting letting himself get out of practice.

The town still boasted a hotel of sorts, but it looked far seedier than the bar. So they headed out of town to make camp in the desert once more.

* * *

The darkness and the liquor made Blue more talkative than usual. He was feeling sentimental, and he wanted to talk about Katie. Though she was never far from his thoughts, out here in the desert night she seemed a million miles away, and it suddenly seemed imperative that his uncle understand just how special she was.

Buck found the whole thing hilarious. The repetition of her infinite virtues and her apparent flawlessness was funny enough, but the fact that his adored nephew was the one rambling on like a besotted poet was irresistible. Blue-Boy had had girlfriends before, even a sort of fiancée once or twice, but on the whole he'd always been so shy around women that he hadn't spent enough time with one to even learn about her good points, much less exaggerate them. Buck cackled. Honestly, it sounded more like Mano going on about some chiquita he'd just met than Blue talking about the woman he was set to marry in a few months.

He had to tease him; he just couldn't help himself.

"I'm not so sure I like the sound o'this Katie you got yerself mixed up with," he said, keeping his expression dead serious.

Blue's eyes bugged out. "What?" he squeaked. "Uncle Buck, how can you say that? You never even met her yet!"

Buck took out his gun and examined the barrel before putting it away again. "Ain't so sure I wanna meet her. I mean, Blue-Boy, she really don't sound like the kinda female I got much use for. Don't know as I'd a got mixed up with her if I was you."

"But—"

"See, I like the kinda woman who can either drink you under the table, or patch ya up and kiss where ya hurt when ya get home. Not the sort who disapproves of a man comin' home from a day in town smellin' like a little bit o'whiskey."

Blue stared at him, speechless. He opened his mouth and closed it a few times before he finally managed to say, "Well, Katie ain't that kinda woman."

"Then how do she act when you come in with whiskey on your breath?"

"Well, I don't … I never…"

"Then jest you try it next time y'go back out to California. Jes' see how la-di-da Missus Wheeler takes to a man that drinks like a man." A smile was creeping onto his face and he was finding it difficult not to laugh.

"Well, I'll just do that!" thundered Blue, thoroughly angry now. "Just to show you what kind of woman she is! And I'll let you know, too."

Buck lost it completely at that point. He rocked back and forth with laughter, shaking his finger at his nephew. "Oh, I had you goin', there, Blue. I had you goin'. The look on yer face – I swear I ain't never see'd your daddy any madder'n you was jus' then."

"Uncle _Buck!"_

He only laughed harder. "Well," he choked, "I got it owed me. I ain't had ya around to tease for a long time. An' you just got so _mad._ Oh, I wish you coulda seen your own face. Whoo." He wiped at his eyes with the back of one gloved hand. Blue sat there stony-faced, not quite glaring at him, but a long way from forgive and forget. After a minute, Buck managed a couple of deep breaths and got himself under control. "Ah, don't be like that, Blue-Boy. I wouldn't really say nothin' against your Katie, not serious."

"You better not." There it was again, that strangely adult demeanour, at odds with his childlike reaction to the teasing.

Buck stopped laughing, sobered slightly by the tone in his nephew's words. He didn't apologise, but he was completely serious when he said, "Hey. Blue, I wouldn't. Fact is, I ain't met her yet, but I like 'er already. Cos, see, I hear you talk about her, an' I can tell she loves ya. An' if she loves you, then that means I gotta love her. Cos I got to love anybody that loves you, and that's all they is to it."

Blue looked down at his hands for a minute, slightly embarrassed by his defensive overreaction. Then he looked up at his uncle with a smile. "You'll love her even more when ya meet her. Promise."

"I believe ya. Now, I'll admit I maybe got a few problems with her, but long as she's good to my little Blue-Boy, I ain't gonna hold 'em against her."

"What kinda problems?" Blue asked, scowling again.

Buck held up his hands in a shrug. "Oh, nothin', really. Nothin' much. Jus' a few little bitty tiny little … nothin'." He fell silent, frowning to himself, and Blue, his feathers still ruffled, chose not to pursue the subject. Eventually, just as it was nearly forgotten, he burst out, "Well, I tell ya, I ain't most pleased with the fact that she's so set on keepin' ya out in California, an' away from your own family. Now, I don't like that at all. And just cos she thinks her kids is too good to live in Arizona and needs some fancy ol' California school 'stead a teachin' 'em at home herself like anybody else lives way out in the sticks knows to do, that don't mean she's got no call to keep you away from your own kin!"

Blue stared at him, wondering for a second if his uncle was trying to tease him again. He opened his mouth to protest, but Buck's impassioned words just ran right over anything he might have had to say.

"Dunno why some o'these women so het up on schoolin' anyhow. I run away from school more days than I went and I turned out jus' fine. My daddy couldn't read a lick – couldn't even write his own name till he was _thirty-five years old_ – and he was the best man I ever knowed. Now here's his onliest grandson 'bout to marry a woman he cain't bring home cos she wants her kids to go to a _real_ school in _California_ of all places."

Blue, having made a couple of unsuccessful attempts to interrupt the rant, lost his temper again and yelled, "That's not the reason!" Buck shut up, waited for him to go on. Blue took a breath and lowered his voice a little. "I mean, sure she wants the boys to go to school as long as they can, she wants 'em to get the best education they can, just like any mother. Even yours. But that's not what ... that's just what I told Pa and Victoria when they asked, cos the whole thing was just too dang complicated to get into that first night back."

"Then how come she be keepin' you out in California?" Buck asked resentfully.

He really had just been teasing Blue earlier, and he'd meant everything he said about how he'd love Katie just because she loved Blue, but he hadn't really realised until he started talking just how badly he'd been hurt by the revelation that they were planning to live elsewhere for the time being. He'd missed his boy badly in the last two years, and when the thought of that separation being extended indefinitely had finally become real to him it was more than he could take.

"She ain't," Blue said. "She'd be willin' to move out to the High Chaparral the minute I said so."

"Then why don't you say so? You're the man, ain'tcha? The wife's supposed to do what her husband wants, not the other way around."

"I can't."

Buck stared at him like he'd grown another head and neither one was talking sense. "Why?" he demanded.

"I just … can't." Blue got up and began to pace around. "Katie says she'll come with me anywhere, but I'm gonna have to want it enough for all of us, cos she don't."

"What's she got against the High Chaparral?"

"Well, nothin', I guess, but … well, Buck, she's a mother. She's got three kids under ten, and she wants to keep 'em safe. I mean, yeah, she wants 'em to go to school, too, but mostly she wants them alive and safe."

Buck crossed his arms across his chest and frowned. "And wrapped up good an' tight in her apron strings, I reckon."

"Not really. Just she's heard all the stories about Apaches and rattlesnakes and comancheros and heat and all the other bad things we got out here, and she don't like the sound of it."

Buck would have laughed if he hadn't been so upset. "Well," he said. "Well, Blue-Boy, I reckon I can't blame her for that. But in that case, she got no business marryin' a man who's part of it. This here desert's your life, and your future. Not 'less you wanna turn your back on yer family that loves ya, stay out there and draw or go into the flour business permanent."

Blue stopped pacing, chewed on his thumbnail. "Well, Pa's got another son now."

"He ain't got time to raise him, though. Not to learn him everythin' he needs to know to run that big ol' ranch. Johnny's just a little baby, and John…" He shook his head. "He already raised you to take over one day. It jes' wouldn't be right to ask him to start all over again."

"I know. I don't have the right to ask it of him, but I don't have the right to ask Katie to give up everything she's ever known and put her kids' lives in danger out here, either."

"If you gonna be her husband, you got the right."

Blue just looked miserable. "No. I don't. I couldn't do that to any woman. Not after what happened to my mother."

"Your _mother?"_ It was the last thing his uncle expected to hear. Annalee, dead for more than a decade, and her son sitting here with it preying on his mind like it happened last week. "Boy, the last thing your mama would want is you usin' her death as an excuse to keep from livin' yer own life, the way you doin' now."

"I know she wouldn't, but I just can't… She never wanted to come out here in the first place, Buck. Pa made her come, because his mind was so set on Arizona that he couldn't see anything else, and that dream of his got her killed. Oh, I'm not blaming him," he said, cutting off Buck's objection before he could make it, "not anymore. But I can't bring myself to do the same thing to Katie."

"Well, then you better just set your mind to bein' a old bachelor like me, cos the only other option you got is—"

"Give up Katie, I know," he finished for him. "And I'm _not_ doin' that. Not for anybody. And if you say she's just a woman, Uncle Buck, so help me I'll slug you."

Buck did laugh then. "Well, I don't want ya to slug me, Blue, so if you ain't givin' her up, and we ain't givin' you up, then you better jes' tell her she's got to take her chances out here. And the sooner, the better."

Blue gave him a half-hearted smile, but he still wasn't happy. Buck was right; there really were only three options open to him, and he couldn't take any of them. The best he could do was postpone the inevitable.

* * *

Without discussing the matter, they turned back south the next morning and headed for home. The rather intense discussion they'd had last night still weighed on their minds, but neither of them wanted to think about it.

Buck tried his best to keep things light. He still had plenty of stories to tell, and he concentrated on the funniest ones he could think of, doing his best to entertain his nephew and keep his mind off his worries.

They skirted the edge of one more little town, but Buck knew it and said even he wouldn't drink there, so they passed on by.

It was still twilight when they made camp for the night. Given a reasonably early start, they could easily make it back to the High Chaparral in time for supper tomorrow night.

They were relaxing over their last cups of coffee, enjoying their conversation, when they heard the sound.

Blue's reflexes had lost something in two years of not having to be constantly on guard; Buck had his revolver out and cocked before he could even reach for his gun.

"All right, Mister," Buck growled, aiming his gun out into the deepening shadows of the desert. "Just step in here into the light real quiet, with your hands up where I can see 'em."

Their uninvited guest did as he was told, moving slowly and carefully into the light of the campfire. "Please, _señores_ , I mean you no harm. I only want some of your coffee to warm me, and perhaps a little food, _por favor?_ I have not eaten since early yesterday."

They eyed the newcomer suspiciously for a moment, then glanced at each other. Buck lowered his gun and nodded towards the ground.

The boy sat where he indicated. He _was_ just a boy, no more than fifteen or sixteen, skinny and small for his age. His green eyes and greasy black curls spoke to his mixed race.

Blue refilled his mug with hot coffee and handed it to the boy. He accepted it gratefully, warming his hands against the sides of the cup as he sipped.

"I think we got a little bacon left over, if you want some."

The boy nodded. "Thank you very much. That would be very good."

"Say, what's your name, boy?" Buck wanted to know.

"Jim. Jim Tovares."

"Well, nice to meetcha, Jim. We're Cannons – I'm Buck and this here's my nephew, Blue."

Jim nodded, recognising the name. "You belong to the big ranch by Tucson."

"Hey, that's right," Blue said. "High Chaparral. That's my pa's place. How come you're out here in the desert without a horse or anything?"

"I'm travelling to Phoenix. I hope to find work there."

"Y'ever do any ranch work? We always short-handed down at Chaparral. You a little scrawny, mebbe, but I reckon them cows won't mind."

Jim shook his head, and reached for the plate Blue handed him. Between mouthfuls he said, "I know little about cows, _señor_. My father was a barber."

Buck laughed. "Well, guess we ain't got much use for a barber. Cows ain't much for shavin'. But you're welcome to put your blanket down here by our fire tonight, anyway, Jim."

* * *

Blue woke just before dawn. He yawned and scratched his head, wondering what had woken him. He'd been dreaming about horses. Seemed he could still hear the soft hoofbeats inside his head even now.

Oh, no.

He looked over where Rebel and Roney should be and sat up abruptly in his bedroll. Sure enough, there was only one large, dark shape there instead of two.

"Buck! Wake up! One of the horses is gone."

Buck came awake with a snort. "Huh? Looks like our new li'l friend is gone, too," he said, with a glance at the place Jim had occupied last night. He jumped to his feet. "He cain't be far. Hear that?"

Blue did. He was already up and on the move by the time his uncle roused himself. In one swift move, he untied Rebel and leapt onto his back, spurring Buck's old bay into action with a tap of his heels.

"You get 'im, Blue-Boy!" Buck yelled after his nephew's retreating form. Gun drawn, he took off on foot as fast as he could go.

The chase lasted for a little more than a mile.

Roney had youth on her side, but Rebel, in spite of being past his prime, was still a good, fast horse and several times it seemed as though they would catch up to them.

Blue fired a few shots, careful to aim over Jim's head. He might be a horse thief, but he was still a poor, half-starved kid, after all. He yelled at him to stop.

He never did know exactly what happened then.

Maybe Rebel's shoe came loose, maybe he stepped in a hole, or maybe it was just a misstep in the eerie pre-dawn light. Either way, the horse skidded, slid, and sent Blue over his head and onto the ground with a hard thud. Rebel came crashing down almost on top of him.

Forty yards ahead, Jim pulled the roan to a halt. He watched, hesitated, uncertain if he should go back to offer help. Then he saw both man and horse stagger to their feet and he took off again, galloping at first and then slowing to a canter as soon as he was out of range of Blue's pistol. There would be no chance of capture now.

Blue was sitting on the ground when Buck finally caught him up, nursing a sprained shoulder and trying to stop the bleeding on his leg.

"What happened? Are you all right?" Buck asked, panting.

Through gritted teeth, his nephew answered, "Yeah, I'm okay. But there's somethin' wrong with the horse. Look at him."

Buck looked.

Rebel stood there trembling and sweating. His breathing was fast and painful.

"What's wrong, ol' fella?" asked Buck. He checked him over carefully, running his hands up and down the sturdy legs. Rebel flinched before his left foreleg was even touched. He shied away and whinnied.

Very gently, Buck bent to examine the injured area. Just below the knee, there was a telltale bulge under the bloodied skin. He didn't have to prod it to see the little shard of bone that protruded. He closed his eyes for a second, shook his head. "Damn," was all he said.

Straightening, he told Blue, "It's broke."

"Oh, no."

"Oh, yeah."

Blue's mouth went dry. "Uncle Buck…" he started, but he didn't quite know what he wanted to say. Buck ignored him.

With a gentle tug on the halter, he pulled the horse's head down to his. Rebel, the loyalest companion he'd ever known, nuzzled his face and hair for the last time. "Poor, poor boy," Buck said.

He took out his gun.

Blue, upset, stepped forwards and touched his sleeve. "Uncle Buck, are you _sure_ there's nothin' we can do for him?"

Buck turned on his nephew angrily. "What's the matter with you, Blue-Boy? Did you grow up on a ranch or didn't ya?"

"Well, yeah, but—"

"Then why you actin' like some wet behind the ears St. Louis dude? Two years enough to unlearn ever'thing your pa and me ever tried to teach you? Ya know what's gotta be done and why."

Blue nodded, accepting the rebuke. He turned aside and walked away a few paces. When the shot came he winced.

* * *

They set off on foot, turning east towards Oracle. It would take several hours to walk it, especially burdened as they were with Buck's saddle, but they knew plenty of people there. There would be no problem finding someone who could lend them a couple of horses.

They walked in silence. Buck stayed a little ahead of his nephew, not wanting him to see the silent tears that he couldn't quite manage to keep at bay.

After two or three miles, Blue spoke up quietly. "I'm sorry, Buck."

"It was just a old horse."

Blue caught up to him. "Yeah, but I know how much you liked that horse. You used to say Rebel was the best horse you ever knew. Remember how you used to call him Prince sometimes, cos he acted so high and mighty?"

"Yeah." Buck swallowed the lump in his throat.

"Anyway, I'm sorry."

"Weren't your fault."

Blue looked down at his feet as he walked. "Yeah, it was. If I hadn't jumped on him like that, chasin' that kid…"

"Then I'da done it. You jest happened to get there first."

"Yeah, but you wouldn't have—"

"You don't know that," snapped Buck. The situation was horrible enough without the boy blaming himself. "You know how many times I dropped that horse over the years? It's just a miracle nothin' like that ever happened before. Now, you jus' shut up, Blue. Jus' shut up."

They trudged along for another minute or two, then Buck hefted the saddle onto his other shoulder and dropped his arm around Blue's shoulders as they walked. "Anyway," he said, "better my favourite horse than my favourite nephew."

Blue looked up at him with a painful smile and put his arm around his waist.

* * *

They saw him off at the stagecoach depot in Tubac in the first week of March.

"Now, you'll let us know as soon as you've got a date fixed?" John was saying.

Blue nodded. "I'll send you a telegram just as soon as we figure it out. That way you'll have plenty of time to make travel arrangements and everything. Pa, you really think you can get Victoria to come along?"

"She'll be there," his father said firmly. "Just you wait."

"I hope so. I'd sure hate for her to miss my wedding, but she didn't sound real sure about it."

"She just worried about the baby, thass all," Buck said. "He don't travel so good."

John shook his head. "I keep tellin' her if his parents managed to get him all the way from Minneapolis to Tucson in a bumpy covered wagon when he was just a few months old, then we can surely get him from Arizona to California without incident. So you just tell that girl of yours to expect the whole family."

Blue smiled. "I will."

The coach driver climbed up onto his perch and gave the signal that they were ready to head out.

Buck kissed his nephew on the forehead and hugged him fiercely. "You don't be a stranger this time, Blue-Boy, hear me?"

"I won't. Promise. Even if a dozen letters get lost."

Father and son looked at one another, trying to find the words to express what they wanted to say, but they couldn't quite manage such a Herculean effort in the little time they had.

They shook hands. For a moment it seemed as if that was all it would be, then Blue pulled his father into a warm hug. "Bye," he said.

"Bye, son."

They let go of each other, and Blue climbed up into the coach without another word.

The driver took up his whip and signalled the horses to move out. Their hooves kicked up a cloud of dust as the coach pulled out and headed west, but John and Buck waved anyway, even if he could no longer see them.


	7. The Miller's Daughter

**Author's Note:** _Okay, long,_ long _chapter. ;) And since it's all a flashback (bar the first paragraph), it could easily stand on its own as a separate story._

 _I hope you like Katie. She's a complicated woman._

* * *

Blue changed trains in San Diego. The heartache of leaving home again was still with him, but the farther north he travelled, the more he felt as if he was _going_ home, too. Remarkable, really, considering that he'd only ever intended to stay in Modesto for a day or two. Funny how a few months could change his whole life forever.

* * *

He'd left San Francisco by road, figuring he'd see a lot more of California that way than he would by train. Sometimes he caught rides from passing wagons – there was no shortage of wagons going to and from San Francisco – and sometimes he walked. He stopped in Modesto for a couple of days simply because he liked the river. It was so unlike the rivers in southern Arizona; green and blue and peaceful, somehow, in spite of the industry dotted along its banks. No one who'd spent even a year or two in the Arizona desert could fail to appreciate the sight of it.

By the bank, there was a gnarled old tree with roots which grew right down into the river itself. It was a perfect place to sit and relax with his thoughts and his sketchpad. He thought how much his art teacher, a true landscape enthusiast if ever there was one, would have loved the sight of the nearby flour mill with its great wheel slowly churning through the clear water. The mill was framed neatly in the foreground, with a few houses scattered along the road behind it providing background interest. Blue, though he had learned to be perfectly competent in the art of landscape, was more interested in the activity of the people around the mill. He drew them in his caricature style, funny little creatures unloading wagons full of wheat and carrying oversized bags of flour on their backs.

Before he knew it, he got so caught up in his drawing and his people-watching that half the afternoon slipped by without him even knowing it.

"Hey, mister, that's our tree," said a childish voice, right by his ear.

Blue looked up to find two boys staring at him. They were obviously brothers, judging by the resemblance. They both had masses of dark auburn curls, large, hazel eyes, and identical expressions of juvenile displeasure. At a guess – he was no expert – he put their ages at about five and eight or thereabouts.

He grinned up at them. "Sorry," he said, but he didn't move. "It's a nice tree. Good place to draw."

The older boy stared at him, puzzled, so he opened up his sketchbook and showed them the drawing of the mill. The boy studied it for a moment and then shook his head. "That's awful funny-looking," he said. "Those people don't even look like people."

"They look like army ants," the little one decided.

Blue grinned. "Yeah, that's what they looked like to me, too. Ants carrying stuff back to their nest. That's why I drew it that way." But the children had already lost interest.

"Do you live in town?" the older boy wanted to know.

"Nope. Just got here yesterday. You live around here?"

The boy nodded and pointed back over his shoulder, at the big house nearest the tree. "There," he said, then pointing in the opposite direction added, "Our grandpa owns the mill."

They ignored him and went about their business, not seeming to mind that he was using their tree. Apparently, as long as the complaint had been registered, that was all that mattered.

Blue shrugged and turned the page in his sketchbook. He drew two cartoonish little figures rough-housing in the grass, playing tag around the tree, and staring intently into the river, then he went back to his study of the mill.

"Granddad!" one of the boys yelled suddenly, and they both went loping off like puppies towards the man now striding over from the mill. When they reached him, each took one of his hands and began to pull him forwards.

As they approached, the younger boy pointed at Blue and said, "That man stole our tree, Granddad."

"Stole your tree? That could be a serious offense, but I know you've been taught to share, Drew." The man winked at Blue, who hid his smile behind his sketchbook. He started to get to his feet to shake hands properly, but the man casually plopped himself down in the grass nearby. "Mason D. Adams," he introduced himself, holding out one hand. He looked to be in his late fifties, with sandy brown hair and a nose that looked as if it had been broken a few times over the years.

"William Cannon."

"Nice to meet you. I see you've met the two miscreants known as Adam and Andrew already."

Blue nodded. "Yeah, sort of."

"They're my daughter's boys. She keeps house for me."

Adam, the older boy, sidled up next to his grandfather and indicated the sketchbook in Blue's lap. "He was drawin' pictures of the mill," he told him. Unlike his brother, his tone held no hint of accusation.

"Oh? Mind if I take a look?" asked Mr. Adams.

Blue, who'd spent the last year learning not to be shy of showing his work to people, hesitated only an instant before handing over the sketchbook.

Mr. Adams looked it over thoroughly, inspecting each and every detail, from the more or less realistic mill building to the little cartoon people who looked, as Andrew said, like army ants.

"That's nicely done, Mr. Cannon. You have a distinctive style, and a good eye for detail. You ever been around a flour mill before?"

Blue shook his head. "No, sir, not really."

"Never know it. You a professional artist?"

He hesitated. After spending all that time in the company of real artists, it felt wrong to claim to be one of them. And yet by definition it was true. He'd spent more than a year not only learning his craft, but making a pretty good living at it.

"Um, yes, sir, I reckon I am," he said, then qualified it by adding, "I spent most of my life ranching, though."

Mason Adams studied him thoughtfully. "That takes a good, strong back," he said.

"Yes, sir. It sure does."

"Care to have a look at the inside? The boys and I can give you the grand tour."

Blue looked surprised, but he said, "Uh, sure. Why not?"

* * *

He asked a number of questions while they were looking over the mill, some from politeness and some out of genuine interest, but he ended up answering even more about himself and his background. His host had never heard of the High Chaparral, though he thought the ranchers in the area probably would have. He showed plenty of interest in it, however.

The tour ended up in an office with a good view of the river. Adams sat down behind the big desk, motioning Blue into another chair. He said in a conversational tone, "Y'know, Jody Spencer broke his leg yesterday."

"Oh, that's too bad," responded Blue. "He a friend of yours?"

"Works for me. Things are about to get busy soon, getting ready for the summer wheat."

"Oh, yeah. I know all about that, believe me. At the ranch we never seem to have enough men, and there's always somebody waitin' for their cattle."

"Thought you might want the job."

Blue looked surprised. "Me? But I'm just passing through."

"So you said. But I thought you might wanna hang around a little longer, collect a paycheck or two. Just for a while, doesn't have to be long-term if you don't want it to be."

"But why me?"

"You're handy," Adams said frankly. "You're young and strong, and you've got an eye for detail. It would help me out a great deal."

He didn't really know how to refuse the offer gracefully. "Well, uh…" was all he could manage.

Adams saw the hesitation, and smiled to himself. "Well, it's always worth asking," he said, slapping Blue on the shoulder. "Either way, why not come over to the house and have dinner with us tonight? Even a man just passing through can't say no to a good, home-cooked meal to speed him on his way. I think Katie said something about pot roast tonight."

That he couldn't turn down. He'd had very few home-cooked meals since he'd left Arizona, and the thought of pot roast made his mouth water.

With a grin he said, "Well, if your daughter don't mind a last minute guest…"

"Nah. Katie's pretty easy-going." He led the way out of the office door and across to the big house a few hundred yards away. As he opened the front door he called out, "Katie, do you mind a last minute guest?"

There was a laugh from the kitchen at the side of the house, and a feminine voice called back, "If I did, I'd have left you a long time ago, Dad!"

When she came out to be introduced a minute later, she was wiping her hands on her apron.

"Ah, there you are," said Adams. "This is my daughter, Kathleen Wheeler. Katie, I'd like you to meet William Cannon. He might take Jody's place at the mill, with any luck."

"Nice to meet you, Mr. Cannon," she said. She offered him her hand, and laughingly apologised for her dishevelled appearance.

As he took her hand, he didn't even notice that there was flour on her shirtwaist or that her fair hair was straggling out of its confinement. All he saw was the pretty little upturned nose and the pretty little downturned mouth, and those sparkling deep blue eyes with a wide ring around the iris.

He held on to her hand just a fraction of a second too long, and stared at her till she looked away with a faint blush. Blue, embarrassed, dropped her hand and looked away with his ears burning.

Mason Adams folded his arms across his chest and watched them with one eyebrow slightly raised.

* * *

Out of habit, he started to reach for the nearest serving spoon, then stopped abruptly as he realised they were apparently one of those families who said grace before meals. He stopped and waited, head bowed. While his eyes were closed, he heard the scrape of a chair leg from across the table, and felt a small body bump against him as it slid into the chair next to his.

His host was also aware of the new arrivals. He finished up the perfunctory blessing with a special prayer: "And dear Lord, please help my tardy grandsons to remember that their hands are to be washed before meals. Amen."

Adam and Andrew sheepishly got to their feet and headed for the kitchen sink to wash up for dinner. Katie caught her elder son by his arm as he sidled past her chair. "And hurry up before the food gets cold, because we're not waiting for you."

Blue looked up at her, surprised at the mild tone, and saw that she was smiling and shaking her head. The infraction was clearly one of long standing, and no one seemed particularly bothered by it. In fact, the whole atmosphere around the table was friendly and relaxed. There was no tension like at home, where mealtimes were often the only chance they had to see each other long enough to talk over urgent matters, and there was no sense of formality like in some other homes he'd visited. Just a nice little family meal with people who seemed to like one another's company.

And the food, too, was excellent. He hadn't had a meal like this since he'd left home, and he wasted no time in telling his hostess that. She smiled at the compliment, and his heart did funny things.

"Why, thank you, Mr. Cannon," she said. "I take it your mother's a good cook?"

He nodded, and carefully swallowed his mouthful of potato before he answered. Another difference between here and at home. "Yeah, she sure was. 'Specially baking. She made the best pies. Victoria's a real good cook, too. Nobody ever complains about one of her meals, that's for sure."

"Victoria?"

"My stepmother," he explained, and took another bite.

Blue had the sudden, uncomfortable sensation of being watched. He looked across the table at the younger boy to find him staring at him, pop-eyed. He had no idea where to look or how to respond.

Katie came to his rescue. "What's the matter?" she asked her son gently.

"He has a _stepmother,"_ he told her in a loud whisper. All three adults laughed at his dramatic tone.

"Well, what's wrong with that?"

"Justin and Nathan have a stepmother, and she's real mean."

His mother nodded understandingly. Gravely, but with a hint of a smile meant just for Blue, she explained, "She makes them do their homework _and_ wash behind their ears."

He did his best to go along with the joke. "Oh. Well, I was already grown, so I didn't have homework. And I could wash behind my ears without bein' told. Not all stepmothers are mean, y'know."

"They are in storybooks," Andrew insisted.

Blue had no answer for that, so Katie thought it was time to intercede. "That's enough. You boys don't monopolise our guest."

Mason Adams cleared his throat and took charge of the conversation. Throughout the rest of the meal he mentioned points of interest that he'd managed to get out of Blue during their brief conversation at the mill, and encouraged his guest to expand on the information.

Blue told his stories simply, in broad strokes, sketching out a quick but effective portrait of life in Arizona. Several times he stopped himself, afraid that he was talking too much and boring his hosts. He had nothing to worry about on that score; every single person at the table with the exception of the two-year-old in the highchair sat spellbound, listening with rapt attention to every word he spoke.

"I've read that the Indian situation can be pretty bad out there."

"Oh, it can be. It's not so bad now, or at least not last I heard, but boy, the first couple of years were pretty rough. They used to attack the ranch, oh, every week or two. We'd have to set up barricades and fight it out."

"Wow," breathed Adam, his young eyes shining with excitement. "I'd love to fight off real Indians."

"Oh, no, you wouldn't," Blue told him. "It sounds like a lotta fun, but really it's just scary. Can't go off anyplace by yourself, and even if you were with somebody else you'd have to be ready to hightail it for home just as soon as you spotted an Apache. And even home wasn't always safe. I nearly got scalped on the roof one time. And my mother got killed just lookin' out her bedroom window."

The entire family looked at him with horrified expressions on their faces. Katie rushed to give him her most sincere condolences. "Oh, Mr. Cannon, I'm so sorry to hear that. What a terrible thing!"

Blue looked down at his plate. "Yeah. It was a long time ago. Pretty soon after we got there."

"I'm surprised you didn't turn around and go straight back east."

"You don't know my father. He gets set on somethin' the way he was set on Arizona, there's nothin' can turn him back."

"Apaches are the real bad Indians, right?" interrupted Adam. Catching a look from his grandfather, he mumbled, "Sorry for interrupting, Mr. Cannon."

Blue shook his head, considering the question seriously. "No, that's all right. Well, I don't think I'd really say they're bad, exactly. Some are bad, yeah. And some of 'em are good, and most of 'em just sorta … I dunno, sit around waitin' for somebody to tell 'em which way to be, I guess. Just like most people."

Katie stared at him, utterly astounded. "I'm amazed to hear you say such a thing after one of them killed your mother."

He gave a slight frown, then looked up at her and said quietly, "I just have to tell myself that he was one of the bad ones, ma'am." He'd been telling himself that for years now. It didn't bring him comfort, exactly, but getting it down to its most raw, simplistic level had made it easier to take somehow. So did Buck's rather bitter addition – the fervent hope that one of their bullets had at some point found that particular Apache – but he didn't mention that part of it. That was hardly fit conversation for the dinner table, especially with children present. Because they still seemed doubtful, he added something he'd heard his father say more than once. "I've seen people murdered by white men, too, but that don't mean it's right to hate every single settler."

Mason nodded. "Sensible. Katie?" His voice went soft with concern as he looked at his daughter across the table. "You all right?"

Her face was suddenly ashen. Blue, alarmed, half rose to his feet to – well, he wasn't really sure what to do, but he wanted to help if he could. But almost immediately she seemed to recover herself and pasted a smile on her face.

"I'm fine, Dad. Mr. Cannon, why don't you tell the boys a little more about what real cowboys are like," she said, quickly changing the subject. "I daresay not a great deal like 'The Adventures of Deadeye Dick' or 'Slippery Slim in the Gold Country', or any of those other terrible dime novels they like so much."

Blue gave an embarrassed laugh. "I, uh, I actually illustrated the last 'Slippery Slim' book," he admitted. "But you're right, they are kinda terrible. And definitely nothing like real cowboys."

* * *

After dinner, Mason led his guest to a dark-panelled study at the back of the house. Without asking, he poured him a glass of brandy. Blue took the brandy, but politely refused the cigar he offered.

"I like a good cigar," he said, snapping the lid of the humidor shut in a way that probably wasn't good for it. "Only ever smoke them in here, though. My wife didn't allow it in the living room, always said she didn't like the way it made the furniture smell. She never lived in this house, but for some reason I'm still obeying her rules. And I never allow it at the mill. Too much danger of fire. So, decided yet?"

"About the cigar?" Blue asked, confused by the sudden change of subject.

"No, no. About the job."

"Oh. Sorry, I didn't really give it much thought during dinner."

Mason waved away the apology. "Don't worry about it. The meal comes with no strings attached. You feel free to sleep on the prospect. Tomorrow's soon enough to give me your answer."

"All right. Thanks. I'll give it some thought soon's I get back to the hotel."

"Do that. If you do take the job, I wouldn't advise staying at the hotel. Too expensive for what you get."

Blue grinned. He'd only been in town for a couple of days but he'd already reached the same conclusion. "Any good boarding houses in town?"

"Pagett's, over on Sycamore Street. They may be full up, though; they generally are. Don't try Donovan's. He gets drunk twice a week and raves all night."

"Sounds like Tucson. Might remind me of home."

Mason laughed. "You could board here if you like. We've got a spare room upstairs, and you already know the meals are good."

"Your daughter wouldn't mind?"

"We've been boarding mill hands off and on for years. If Katie minds she's never mentioned it. And she's not shy about speaking up, so I'm guessing it'd be fine with her."

"Well," he hedged.

"Call it a bonus incentive," Mason suggested with a wink, and Blue came close to blushing.

* * *

She was definitely something of an incentive.

He had no need of the job and no particular desire to stay in the area more than a day or two. His plan, if he had one at all, was simply to drift south, take a few weeks and look over California, then head on home to Arizona. No, there was no reason at all for him to stay here and work in a flour mill of all places.

And yet…

No. There was no "and yet". Tomorrow morning he'd get up and pack his things, check out of the hotel, stop by the mill and tell Mr. Adams that he was going to decline his offer, and then head on out of town. And that was that. Mind made up, Blue turned out the light and settled himself down to sleep.

But sleep was elusive that night. Each time he closed his eyes, Katie Wheeler's face came into his mind. Those eyes of hers! They were arresting to say the least. And that smile, and … well, everything. It had been a long time since he'd met a girl who appealed to his senses quite so strongly. Even the young woman he'd been briefly involved with in St. Louis seemed to be fading to the back of his mind, and the broken heart he'd been nursing for months seemed a bit juvenile and silly all of a sudden.

"Sheesh," he said out loud. "Now _this_ is silly." She could be still be married for all he knew; lots of women had husbands who were off someplace, working far away from home. And even if she didn't, who wanted to get involved with a woman who had three kids?

Even a woman like that.

Blue sighed and punched the pillow, and made one more fruitless attempt to get to sleep.

* * *

After his restless night, he was late in getting up the next morning. He was barely in time to get breakfast before the dining room closed, and there was certainly no time to get his things together beforehand. Well, he'd just head on over to the mill and then check out afterwards.

It wasn't a very long walk from the middle of town, and the morning was pleasant. He dawdled a bit on his way, enjoying the sunshine and the fresh air. As he rounded the bend in the road, he caught sight of a woman and a young child walking just ahead of him. The woman walked slowly, careful of the large pail she carried, so he overtook them almost immediately.

He turned to say good morning as he passed, and stopped in his tracks when he recognised her.

"Well! Hello, again," said Katie.

All of Blue's carefully planned good intentions deserted him, and he greeted her with a goofy smile. "Good morning. I was just on my way to the mill."

"Oh, good. I hope you've decided to stay on awhile. Dad's quite taken with you, you know."

"Really? That's good," he said, without really understanding why he said it. All he knew was that if he'd thought she was pretty last night, she seemed even more stunning in the morning sunlight. Even with her hair tucked up under a bonnet and carrying a big pail of milk. "Oh, here, let me carry that for you."

She smiled and handed it over. "Thank you, that's very kind of you. We barely had enough milk to get through breakfast this morning, so I had to go to the dairy. Second time this week. I swear these boys go through milk so fast I'd need a cattle ranch the size of your father's to keep up with them. I suppose your family always has all the milk you can use."

Blue laughed. "Yeah. 'Course we specialise in beef, really, but there's always a cow or two around the ranch house for milk and butter. Cheese sometimes."

They walked along side by side, with her youngest running here and there ahead of them. The conversation was nothing but inconsequential small talk – not that Blue would have had much idea what they were talking about anyway – but he couldn't remember ever enjoying himself more.

She took off her bonnet as she opened the kitchen door and the sun shone onto her bright hair, showing a coppery sheen to it that hadn't been evident in the lamplight at dinner last night.

Blue stopped and stared at her. "Hey! I didn't know your hair was red."

She almost blushed. "It isn't."

"It is in this light," he insisted.

Katie took the milk from him and went on into the kitchen. He followed her.

Belatedly he remembered that a lot of women really hated to be accused of having red hair for some reason. "Well, it's what a lot of people call 'titian', actually," he said, by way of making amends.

"Titian! I've never heard that one before. My momma always called it strawberry blonde." She turned around and looked at him with a quick little smile and then turned back to what she was doing.

"Mine, too," he told her. "And it's not technically titian, anyway. That's a little darker. I never heard of it, either, but when I studied art, I saw some paintings by this fellow named Titian. He, er, was famous for painting a bunch of pictures of women with reddish hair, so they named it after… Well, it doesn't really matter." He trailed off, uncomfortably aware of how foolish he sounded.

She laughed, but made no other response. The silence filled the kitchen. Blue got to his feet. "Um, well, I suppose I should get on over to the mill and talk to your father."

"All right. Thanks again for carrying the milk home for me."

"You're welcome." And with that prosaic goodbye he left, feeling deflated and stupid and very, very childish.

Before he'd gone more than thirty feet, though, she opened the screen door and called to him. "Mr. Cannon?"

"Yeah?"

"What are you planning on telling him?"

"Huh?"

"Shall I get the room ready for you or not?"

Blue looked down at the ground with a smile. "Might as well," he said. What the hell. It wouldn't hurt him to stick around for a month or two, anyway.

"Good. I'll see you tonight, then."

* * *

Blue settled into the household with comparative ease.

He grew to like the family more and more every day, particularly Katie. Her mere presence was simultaneously soothing, exciting, and just a little bit confusing. His growing admiration for her as a person certainly hadn't done a thing to lessen the sheer physical attraction she'd possessed for him from the very start. If anything it acted as an intensifier.

If only he could tell if she felt the same way about him. There were times when he could swear she was flirting with him – little things, mostly, like a certain tone of voice, or the way she smiled at him, even an occasional turn of phrase that might just mean a little more than it seemed to on the surface. Other times she treated him, well, almost like a fourth son, albeit one her own age. Either way he enjoyed her company, and he didn't regret his decision to stay on.

Working at the mill was neither especially taxing nor especially rewarding, but he got on well with the people he worked with. Mason, as a boss, was an eye-opening experience. The only time he raised his voice was to be heard over the noise of the mill. If he found something done badly he seldom assigned or even looked for blame, but the quiet sarcasm he employed left every man there, no matter how innocent of wrongdoing, feeling vaguely guilty and ashamed. As a business tactic it was uncomfortable, but strangely effective.

At home the sarcasm was largely absent. He was affectionate towards his family, and he continued to be as gracious and welcoming towards Blue as he had been the first day they met. He and his daughter both made him feel as if he'd known them for a long time, not just a matter of days.

It took a little longer to get accustomed to the boys, but Blue managed well enough considering how little time he'd actually spent around children. Victoria's strays tended to be older, and his interaction with the children of his married friends in St. Louis had been somewhat limited. At first, he found it difficult to know how to reply to the boys when they asked a question or made some comment he didn't understand, but the awkwardness gradually began to pass. He was flattered and a little surprised at all the attention they gave him. The two older boys couldn't get enough of his stories about Arizona. They wanted to hear all about cowboys and Indians and horses.

The revolver that he was careful to keep out of their reach on top of the wardrobe fascinated them.

"Are you _sure_ you're not a gunfighter?" Andrew asked, for about the fourth time in the three days he'd been there.

"Uh, yeah. I'm real sure I'm not a gunfighter. For one thing I wouldn't wanna be, and for another I'm not good enough."

The little boy frowned. "But you have a gun."

"All ranchers have guns. Have to. Don't people wear guns around here?" he asked. He'd never actually bothered to notice during his brief stay in town whether it was normal to be armed or not. Getting out of the habit after all this time away from home.

Katie looked up from her mending, her expression more closed off than Blue was used to seeing. "It's quite common," she replied tersely. "Adam, would you take your brothers upstairs, please? It's long past Aaron's bedtime at least."

Andrew started to object, but his mother curtailed his arguments by saying, "Go on, Drew. You can look at your books for a little while until I come up to tuck you in. All right?"

He grinned. Permission to look at storybooks in bed was a rare treat, and well worth the sacrifice of his new hero's company. He started for the stairs at a gallop.

His younger brother, not yet three years old, made to copy him but his short legs weren't quite up to the challenge. He tripped on the first step and his chin made contact with the carpeted surface. Katie dropped her mending and shot to her feet, but before she even had a chance to go to him Adam was there, comforting and scolding his brother at the same time.

"Hey, it's all right. You're not hurt, nothin' to howl about. Don't you know you're not big enough to do that? You're just a kid. Come on, silly, I'll carry you up."

Katie watched them go, her fingernails making red marks against the inside of her clenched fist. She didn't sit down until all three boys had disappeared into their bedroom. Then she let out the breath she'd been holding and dropped back into her chair.

Blue noticed her tension and sought to reassure her. "Don't worry. I don't think he's hurt."

She shook her head slowly. "No. I know. He's fine. It's just so hard not to overprotect him. All of them, really, but especially the baby."

"My mother was sort of the overprotective type," Blue found himself saying. "If I fell like that she would have hugged me till I forgot what happened."

Katie nodded. "Well, that's a very strong impulse. And if he'd really hurt himself I would have. But I know hovering's not good for them, no matter how much I want to do it."

"No, you're probably right. Sure does make a little boy feel loved and cherished, though."

"Well, I'm sure you were that," she said, and gave him a smile that made his heart stop. "Your mother sounds like a wonderful woman."

"Yeah, she was."

"What about your father?" she asked idly, eyes on her sewing.

"Oh, he'd have probably growled at me about didn't I know better than to do somethin' that foolish." She looked up at him with a horrified expression, and he reconsidered his words. "Well, maybe not at when I was that young," he admitted. "He'd probably have asked if I was all right and then told me not to run in the house. The growling woulda come later. Sure wished I'd had a big brother like Adam to look after me, though."

"Do you have any sisters?"

Blue shook his head. "Nope. Just me." After a moment he added thoughtfully, "I think I was supposed to have an older brother, though. They lost their first one or something. I don't know, it's hard to remember. Ma didn't really tell me a whole lot about it."

"That's too bad. I would've hated to do without my big brother while I was growing up. He was always there to take care of me, even when I was a little pest."

"I didn't know you had a brother. Where is he now?"

"Buried near Chattanooga, I believe. That's his picture on the mantelpiece," she said, without looking up. "The one on the left."

Blue went over to the fireplace and picked up a double frame. He had seen it before but had never really paid any attention. This time he carried it over to the lamp and took a good look at the photograph on the left. It showed a very young man, no more than a boy, really, wearing the uniform of the United States Infantry. There was perhaps a faint resemblance to his father, but for the most part he looked just like any other boy his age. Sent into the war to die a dozen or so years ago, just like so many of them.

He glanced at the photo in the other side of the frame as he started to put it back in its place, then stopped and took a closer look. It showed a hollow-cheeked Confederate soldier, probably in his mid-twenties at the time. Now _there_ was a family resemblance that even the big, bushy moustache couldn't hide. In the deep-set eyes and wildly curling hair, Blue had no trouble recognising all three of his sons.

"One on the right must be your husband."

"Yes."

He found himself wanting to say any number of things, some of them entirely too personal. He wanted to tell her that he'd had family on both sides, too, and that she'd win his Uncle Buck's heart forever for having married a Reb. He was curious to know how the man had ended up all the way out here on the west coast, but not as curious as he was about what had happened to him and whether he was alive or dead.

"Mrs. Wheeler," he began, but she forestalled him.

Neatly folding her mending away in the sewing basket, she rose and said, "Well, I promised the boys that I'd be up to tuck them in before too long. I think I'll say goodnight, now, Mr. Cannon. Don't bother with the lights when you go up. Dad will get them when he finally comes out of his office."

"Yeah. Goodnight," said Blue, and watched her go upstairs. He instinctively felt sorry for her without really knowing why.

* * *

Mason Adams was a straightforward man of business, and it didn't take long for him to reveal his grand plan of using Blue's drawings to advertise the mill. After Blue proved amenable to the idea, he wasted no time in getting the new advertising posters printed and distributed. They very quickly proved a hit.

He was exultant over dinner that night. "Didn't I tell you, my boy?" he enthused. "People like that distinctive drawing style of yours. They respond to it. And when they see the name of a business attached to one of those drawings, they can't help but respond to the business as well."

"And they're responding already?" Katie asked.

"Oh, yes. I talked to the managers of both general stores this afternoon, and they both tell me that sales of our flour are up, and they've had people talking about those clever drawings on our posters. I even had an inquiry about rates this morning at the mill from a farmer I know good and well always uses Hartwell's."

Blue was gobsmacked. "And I had something to do with that?"

"You had everything to do with that. Absolutely everything."

"Wow," was the only response he could manage. With a shy grin, he looked over at Katie to see if she seemed impressed.

Apparently she was; her beaming smile was the most brilliant thing he'd ever seen, and it was aimed straight at him. He looked away from her, his face flaming.

"Congratulations, Dad," she said, but she was still looking at Blue.

Her father, caught up in his own enthusiasm, paid no attention to the interaction between the two young people. His mind was entirely on business. "We might have been the first mill in town – why we came here in the first place, Mr. Cannon, when the town was first being built seven years ago – but we're not the only one. Not anymore. And I don't believe in resting on my laurels. Never fear good, healthy competition, but always be ready outfox 'em, that's my motto."

He talked his way through the rest of the meal, monopolising the conversation to the point that no one else really bothered to try to get a word in edgewise. Finally he got up and took his coffee into his study, no doubt to moisten his throat after the oratory feat. The boys, without waiting to be formally excused, got up and scampered off outside.

In the abrupt silence that fell over the dining room, Blue looked at Katie, Katie looked at Blue, and they both burst out laughing.

"Well, I guess he was pleased," Blue joked. "It was kinda hard to tell."

"Yes. My father's very reserved when it comes to talking about his business."

"Yeah, kinda like mine."

"Do you know, I don't suppose he tasted a single bite of that meal."

"Well, then, that was his loss, cos I sure did, and I've never tasted anything better."

A faint blush of pleasure coloured her cheeks at the compliment. "Why, thank you, kind sir," she responded, with a note in her voice that was quite definitely flirtatious. "You're by far the most gallant boarder we've ever had."

Blue swallowed. He wasn't imagining it – she was flirting with him. She actually _was_ flirting with him. He'd had cause to wonder now and again, but until this moment he hadn't been wholly convinced.

"Well, you're by far the prettiest landlady I've ever had," he said boldly, and her eyes sparkled.

"Do you know, I've had that said to me a few times. But I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've ever actually believed it."

He grinned. "Good. Cos I meant it." He picked up a plate from the table and handed it to her, but when she moved to take it from her he didn't let go. They both stood holding the plate, looking at one another. "Shall I help you with the dishes, Mrs. Wheeler?" he offered. If he did that, it would mean an opportunity to be alone with her in the kitchen, working side by side.

She tugged the plate out of his hand. "No. But you can call me Katie, though."

"All right. If you call me William," he said with a big grin.

The sparkling lights in her eyes disappeared, and she looked suddenly troubled. "I don't know if I could," she said quietly.

She quickly stacked up the rest of the dishes and took them into the kitchen, and Blue walked off, feeling unspeakably confused.

* * *

He went for a long walk along the river, in an unsuccessful attempt to make sense of the confusion in his head. The longer he walked, though, the less sense it seemed to make.

The woman liked him. He _knew_ she liked him. All right, maybe not exactly the same way he liked her, but there was something there. He found himself wishing that Manolito was there to talk to. With all his experience he could probably at least hazard a guess as to what was wrong. Usually when he had problems he craved Buck's advice, but in this case he knew what his uncle would say. _Blue-Boy, most women's pretty much the same, and ain't_ none _of 'em make any sense._

He missed them all, his whole family. He missed the High Chaparral. Maybe he should just pack up and go on back home. After all, Katie was really the only reason he'd decided to stay here, even temporarily.

It was twilight by the time Blue made it back to the house. He could hear the sounds of the family inside the house but he made no attempt to join them. Still considering his options, he sat down by himself on the back steps.

He wasn't sure how long he sat there, but it was fully dark when he heard the squeak of the kitchen door open. Katie adjusted her skirts and sat beside him.

"I owe you an apology," she said.

"No, you don't."

"Yes, I do. I was rude, and I was foolish, and I'm sorry you got caught in the middle of it. The truth is that I had forgotten about you having the same first name as my husband. I wasn't expecting to hear another man called by his name in his house, and it just … it caught me by surprise, that's all. So I acted like a ninny."

Blue glanced sideways at her. "I wouldn't say ninny, exactly."

"Oh, I would. And don't worry, I'd be happy to call you William."

"Don't," he said. "I don't even know why I told you to, anyway. It's only the last year or two that anybody's ever called me by my right name. Everybody at home calls me Blue."

"Blue? Is that your middle name?"

He shook his head. "Nah, just a nickname." He waited for the usual question about where in the world he ever got a name like that, not looking forward to admitting the embarrassing truth that he was named after a dog. To his surprise, she didn't ask.

Instead, she just repeated the name again, savouring the sound of it. "I like it," she decided. "It rather suits you. I think I'd like to call you Blue."

"Tell ya the truth, I kinda like hearin' it again. Only time anybody's called me that lately is when I was in San Francisco, when I stopped by to visit an old friend of the family."

Katie smiled. "Well, then, it's settled. Around here we'll all call you Blue."

They sat back and watched the stars for a while.

"What happened to him?" Blue asked abruptly, emboldened by the cover of darkness. "William, I mean."

She was silent for a long moment. He was just wondering if he should apologise for asking when she finally spoke up. "He tried to stop a fight in town. Died defending someone, just the way he lived. Two years ago last December."

"I'm sorry."

Blue reached up and laid a sympathetic hand on her shoulder. For just a split second she rested her cheek on it, then moved her head away so quickly he was almost convinced he'd imagined the whole thing.

* * *

As the summer wore on, Blue's tentative plan of staying just a month or two became more tentative all the time.

After all, if he'd only stayed because of Katie in the first place, it would hardly make sense for him to leave just when she was showing some sign that the attraction was almost certainly not one-sided.

Their relationship was gradually evolving into something that was difficult for him to categorise. They had certainly developed a friendship which was deepening all the time, but mixed in with that there were layers of something else entirely. It was more than a simple flirtation, they both sensed that, but as of yet it hadn't quite become an actual courtship. All Blue really knew for certain was that he was completely losing his heart, and it was proving quite a struggle to keep his head from following.

They were much together that summer, but to Blue's great disappointment, hardly ever alone. As the evenings got longer they often went for walks along the riverbank in the company of most or all of her family.

If it was almost dark before they got home, if everything went exactly right and the two of them just happened to fall behind everyone else, if no one was paying any attention to them … then on rare occasions she would let him hold her hand for a few minutes. No more than that, but it was enough to send heart and head both reeling for the rest of the night.

Once or twice he tried to kiss her, but she wouldn't let him.

"Blue," she said, restraining him gently, "I'm afraid this isn't the time or the place."

"What is the right time and place, then?" he wanted to know.

"We'll know when we get there. I promise."

Regardless of his disappointment, he took her words to heart and resolved to be patient, not to push her. Patience was not known to be a virtue of any man with Cannon blood running through his veins, but he could manage it if he had to. Blue was the gentlest of his family by far, and there was something about Katie Wheeler that brought out every protective instinct he had. She seemed like such a strong woman most of the time, but there was something of the wounded animal about her, too. He'd always been good with wounded animals, even of the human variety.

Mason was emphatically – and rather transparently – on Blue's side in the matter. If they ever did manage to seize a few moments alone together, it was almost invariably his doing. He seized every opportunity to take his grandsons out of the house for a few minutes, and ostentatiously took to his study if Blue and Katie happened to be sitting in the living room after the children had gone to bed.

One night in the middle of August, he suddenly announced, "It's too hot to sit in the house tonight."

"You're right, Dad. Why don't we sit outside till bedtime?"

"I only wish I could," he said mournfully. "Unfortunately I've got work that'll keep me up late as it is. Why don't the two of you go on out? Go take a walk or something, see if you can find a breeze someplace."

"But—"

He waved away his daughter's objection before she had a chance to make it. "Don't worry about the boys. I'll be right there in the study if they need anything. You just take Blue and run on along."

She did just that, and when she judged they were far enough away from the house she stopped and laughed. "That was unsubtle," she said.

Blue, who hadn't noticed anything out of the ordinary, said, "Huh? What was unsubtle?"

"My father. He's trying his hand at matchmaking."

Blue's eyes widened. "Matchmaking? Seriously?"

"I think so. He worries about me too much. Thinks I've been alone too long. And he likes you quite a lot."

"Wow. Huh." After a moment's thought he decided to treat the surprising statement as a joke. "I thought matchmaking was something only mothers did."

"I don't have one, though," Katie said, matching his joking tone.

She took his arm and they strolled slowly to the water's edge, then turned in the direction of the mill.

"You have a pretty terrific father, though."

"Don't think I don't know it."

He smiled down at her. "You're really lucky to have each other. Just, you know, to be as close as you are."

She heard the undisguised envy in his voice and looked at him curiously. "So, what is your father like? I keep getting very contradictory impressions from the way you talk about him."

Blue took his time in answering. He'd thought about it a lot in the last few years, especially since he'd been on his own, but he'd never managed to come to any real conclusions. His father remained an enigma to him, and probably always would.

"He's … complicated," he replied finally. "He's a good man, but… Um. Let's see. Hard. Impatient. Smart. Fearless, determined, heroic. Fierce. Self-righteous. Oh, not one of those self-righteous hypocrites, I don't mean that. Just, well, like there's one right way to do things, and he means to see that's the way it gets done. And he's stubborn, too. Oh, my gosh – stubborn as a mule. No, stubborn as a forty mule team!" he said, and they both laughed.

"He certainly does sound complicated. Mind you, I'd say he passed on a few of those qualities to his son."

Blue laughed. "Few of 'em, maybe. I reckon I got the stubbornness, all right," he admitted.

"And the goodness, and the bravery, and the heroism. And perhaps, every once in awhile, just a _little_ touch of the impatience," she teased. She tightened her grasp on his arm and drew closer to him, seeming almost to lean against him as they walked. It was several seconds before he could even manage to form a coherent thought, much less reply to her surprisingly flattering assessment.

"When have you ever seen me do anything brave or heroic?" he asked, just as soon as he regained his powers of speech.

"Why would I have to? Do you think I don't believe those stories of yours? Oh, you always paint someone else as the hero, of course – usually that magnificent Uncle Buck of yours – but you are quite clearly brave and heroic. No matter how much you try to downplay it."

Blue looked down at his feet. "I don't really downplay anything," he said. "I just know I'll never come close to measurin' up to Big John."

"Do you really _want_ to?"

"Yeah," he said, without hesitation. "I may not wanna be exactly like him, but I wouldn't mind bein' a little closer."

"Hmm." Katie pondered that for a moment. "Now I see where all the contradiction comes from. It sounds to me as if you love him a great deal, admire him tremendously, and have never gotten along with him at all."

"Hey, did I ever tell you you're pretty smart?" he asked, and she giggled. "You sure got most of that right."

"Most of it?"

"Yeah. Mostly. I wouldn't say we really _never_ got along. Had a few rough years there for a while, but things haven't been too bad since then. And when I was a little boy… Well. I mean, I always got along with Uncle Buck better, cos he's pretty much just a big kid himself, but Pa was my _hero._ Back then I thought he could do no wrong."

"Ah, it's disheartening to find out that your parents aren't perfect after all," she said with a sly, hide-and-seek smile, and Blue wondered if she was speaking as a daughter or as a mother.

"Yeah. Sure is," he agreed. "I don't know. Everything was just so different when he came back from the war. _He_ was different. He seemed a lot harder, you know? Meaner. Ready to snap at me for every little thing I did wrong. Which was everything, according to him. Used to be, if I couldn't manage somethin', he might get irritated, but he'd try to teach me. After he came home, he acted like I was the stupidest, most incompetent thing he'd ever laid eyes on. Four years of bein' the man of the house and all of a sudden I was nothin'. I thought I did a good job. Ma said I did. But not Big John, no sir."

"But hadn't you been helping your mother run the ranch while he was away?"

Blue laughed mirthlessly. "Oh, no, he rented out the ranch. Said a fourteen-year-old boy couldn't handle it. He was probably right about that part, anyway," he admitted. "Then when he came back he just sold it out from under us without a word."

"Good heavens. Why?"

"Aw, he'd caught Arizona fever by then. Spent all his time writing letters to the land offices in Phoenix and Tucson and everyplace else he could think of. He was gonna grab his piece of government grant land and buy some more right next to it. Build himself an empire."

"Well, he did, didn't he?" she pointed out.

"Yep."

They'd reached the mill by then, and she reached out and patted the side wall almost with affection. "Now, _that_ sounds like my father. He might fool you, but this is no less Dad's empire than the High Chaparral is John Cannon's."

"And Adam is the crown prince?" He'd seen the way Mason was with his eldest grandson, the simple way he explained business matters to him and encouraged him to hang around the mill during working hours. Andrew, as well, to a lesser extent, though the difference might be due only to the younger boy's age.

"Heir presumptive, I suppose. My brother was the crown prince. And William was supposed to be the great second chance. Dad could have retired by now if he'd wanted to. If—" She squeezed her eyes shut, trying not to cry.

Blue instinctively pretended not to see. To break the tension he said, "I can't see Mason wanting to retire any time soon, any more than my pa would."

"True." Grateful for his understanding, she said, "And anyway, it's not as if he's exactly old. He'll have plenty of time for Adam to grow up and decide if he wants to take over the mill one day."

Blue wandered around front and sat down on the mill's wide front porch. Katie came over and sat next to him. He thought about what it was to be the heir to an empire. One day, he would inherit the largest, most successful ranch in the Arizona territory. It was a sobering thought, but not terrifying or disheartening. He'd asked himself many times if that was what he really wanted out of life, and the only answer he kept coming up with was yes. Maybe he lacked his father's passion for the High Chaparral, but it was a part of him nonetheless. It was bred in his blood and bone, and he'd welcome it, even if it meant he'd never have the time to draw another picture. So very unlike Manolito, who wanted more than anything else to escape the destiny that he regarded as a millstone round his neck. And now Adam…

Blue thought about the boy, wondering if he knew what life had in store for him, wondering if he'd mind when he found out. He thought of the longing in his voice when he talked about wanting to see the High Chaparral. Oh, it was probably just a kid's fantasy, just like when he spoke of wanting to fight Indians, but for right now he meant it. He'd certainly meant it every time he begged Blue to teach him how to ride a horse, and how to shoot that pistol that fascinated him so much. His mother was wavering on the horseback riding idea, but adamantly opposed to the gun. No doubt she was all for the tame future he had ahead of him.

He glanced over at her and couldn't resist teasing her, just a little. "You know, for a kid who's bound to be a miller, Adam sure does have a liking for adventure."

Katie shuddered. "All small boys have a liking for adventure," she said. "Fortunately most of them live to outgrow it."

"Not all of us outgrow it, but we survive anyway."

"I don't understand how."

"Well, I don't, either, but we do."

For a long time, the only sounds they heard were the buzzing of the cicadas attached to every available surface, and the steady whish of the great wheel as it slowly churned the water. The silence between them was companionable now, the awkwardness completely gone. They were enjoying the nighttime quiet, and one another's company.

Blue turned to look at Katie, and caught her looking at him. With an embarrassed titter, she looked away. He kept right on watching her, unable to take his eyes off her.

She looked back at him and smiled. "We've been out here a long time. I suppose we should be getting back."

"Suppose so," he said, but neither of them moved.

They sat looking into each other's eyes, oblivious to the rest of the world. At this moment there was only the two of them. No one else even existed. Katie reached out and held Blue's hand, and he gave her fingers a gentle squeeze.

 _If this isn't the perfect moment for a first kiss then I don't know what is,_ Blue thought, and moved his head toward Katie's.

For just a split second she almost moved in to him, then abruptly she pulled back and jumped to her feet, already moving away from him. She stood by the corner of the mill, half in shadow, arms wrapped around herself.

Blue sighed, half irritated and half concerned. He got up and went to her, putting his hands on her shoulders.

"Katie, you can't tell me that this isn't the right time or place. They both seem pretty perfect to me."

She nodded, not looking at him. "They seem pretty perfect to me, too," she said, in a small voice. "And I _wanted_ you to kiss me just then, Blue. I did."

"Then what's the matter?"

"I am."

"Huh?"

"It's me. I'm the problem. See, Dad's wrong about me. I don't feel as if I've been alone too long at all." She turned to face him, and he could see enormous teardrops welling up in her eyes. "It's been forever, and yet it still hasn't been long enough."

The look that reminded him of a wounded animal was back, more pronounced than he'd ever seen it before. She seemed incredibly fragile. Brittle. As if a touch or even a wrong word could shatter her into a million pieces.

Blue felt pretty shaky himself, for that matter, unsure of what to do or say. He tried desperately to keep himself calm, sound nonchalant.

"Well, I've always thought getting over it too soon's a lot worse than taking too long," he found himself saying. Doubtless it was because of all the time they'd spent talking about his father tonight, but it seemed like Katie's tears and uncertainties, even after nearly three years as a widow, made a whole lot more sense than John's falling in love with his second wife while supposedly mourning the first.

Then out of nowhere, the parallel hit him with such force it almost knocked the breath out of him. If his father could fall in love while still grieving, then maybe…

 _Oh_. _Oh, my gosh. Surely not,_ he thought, staring at Katie. He wondered if he might have just accidentally stumbled on the answer. _Could_ she actually be falling for him? It would sure explain a lot of things, but he couldn't quite bring himself to hope. Not yet.

She sniffled, trying to get herself under control. "Then what is the right time, do you suppose?"

"The right time?" he asked blankly. He'd already forgotten what he'd said.

"The right time between too soon and too long."

He blinked, trying to think of any halfway intelligent response and failing utterly. Then it hit him, and he smiled.

"You'll know it when you get there," he promised, quoting her own words back at her.

Katie recognised it, and smiled at him through her tears. She reached out and put her hands on his upper arms. "You're a very dear man, Blue Cannon, and I'm glad you're my friend."

After the shocking thought he'd just been entertaining, the word _friend_ had no power to wound him. He pulled her into a hug and felt her melt against him. It felt like heaven, even if heaven was not quite his yet.

"Hey, you're getting my face and neck all wet," he teased.

"Sorry."

"It's all right."

He moved his arms, holding her closer, and brushed his lips softly against her closed eyelids. Her grip tightened in response. He realised that she was no longer crying, but he kept on holding her and she stayed in his arms willingly.

* * *

Blue sat on a picnic blanket at the river's edge, art supplies scattered all around him. On his lap he held an oversized pad of watercolour paper, specially ordered from the general store. He was concentrating on the gnarled tree which grew halfway between the house and the mill, a black silhouette against the deep blue background of the evening sky.

"I wondered where you'd gone running off to after dinner," Katie's soft voice said from behind him. "Isn't it too dark to be painting?"

Blue shook his head vaguely, still intent on his work. "Mm mmm. This is the kind of light I want for this. See how dramatic it is?"

She looked up at the tree. "Oh," she said, with the surprised air of the non-artist. "That is striking. I'd never noticed."

He kept on painting for a few moments, paying little heed as she sat down beside him on the blanket. Before very long it was too dark to see what he was doing any longer, so he set the pad down to air dry for a few minutes and washed his brush carefully. Katie, respecting his mood, waited in silence for him to have time for her.

"Be even more striking in the middle of winter, with all the leaves gone," he said absently. "I'd like to paint another version of it then, in this same sort of light."

Katie's breath caught. "Then you're planning on staying through the winter?"

"Yeah, probably," Blue said. He busied himself gathering up his paints and brushes and things and putting them away in his satchel. "If you don't mind, that is."

"No, I don't mind. I'd like that, actually. For you to stay on a bit."

Blue turned his head away from her, trying to hide the big smile on his face. "Good," he said. "Good. I'd like that, too."

He turned back to find her sitting ever so slightly closer to him than she had been, or maybe it just seemed that way because he was so aware of her presence. His vow about respecting her boundaries had always been a hard one for him, but the more time went on, the better he got to know her, the more difficult the task became. When she was close to him like this, it seemed all but impossible. He cleared his throat and shifted his position slightly.

"So, where are the boys?" he asked, just to have something to say.

"In bed."

"Oh, yeah. I forgot. Earlier bedtime since school's started. Well, I guess you'll have a little more time to yourself in the evenings, huh?"

She made a face. "Oh, yes. Time to catch up on that mending, just in time for one of them to tear something else. Suppose I should really get back to it, anyway."

"Yeah. Well, I reckon I ought to go and finish that long letter I started to my folks the other day. Haven't really written since I left San Francisco. They'll be startin' to worry."

Katie's blue eyes sparkled with mischief. "Long letter, huh? And what are you finding to tell them about us?"

Blue gulped, misunderstanding the question. "About … _us?"_

"My family and me."

"Oh," he said, feeling instantly foolish. "Well, just whatever I think of, I suppose. About how well those advertisements are doing, for one thing. I think they'll be real proud to know that. And I told 'em that your father's a good man to work for, and about how nice you are, and what a good cook. Victoria's been convinced I've been starving to death since I left home. Oh, and I told 'em about how the boys seem to think I ought to be a gunfighter for some reason." He laughed.

"Is that all? Nice, and a good cook?" she teased.

Blue felt the rush of blood to his face, and had never been more glad in his life for the cover of darkness. "Well, no, not exactly _all._ I did mention how smart you were, and that you're real pr— Hey!" he interrupted himself, belatedly realising what she was up to. "You're just fishing for compliments, aren't you?"

"If I were, the catch would be mighty thin tonight," she laughed.

"Well, that's what you get! My grandma always used to say that anybody who has to fish for compliments probably deserves a poor catch."

He laughed with her, and reached out to touch her hand. He meant nothing by it – just a friendly touch, the same as he'd done dozens of times before – only this time there was something different. For a moment they kept laughing, enjoying the merriment, and then gradually the laughter died away, leaving them staring into one another's eyes. Blue was the first to drop his.

He cleared his throat. "Well," he said. "Reckon I should probably get back to actually writin' that letter instead of just talkin' about it, huh?"

"Mm hmm. We should probably go in anyway," said Katie. "Mosquitoes will be out before long."

"Yeah. Don't wanna get bit, huh?"

"No. That's right, we don't."

Blue got to his feet, and reached down to help her to hers. Katie stumbled slightly as she rose, and he put a hand on her arm to steady her. He found himself staring into her eyes, unable to move his hand. She looked up at him, lips parted, with an expression that made Blue's heart pound.

"Katie," he whispered hoarsely. "Please tell me this is the right time and place."

But Katie said nothing at all. Wordlessly, she reached up and grasped the back of his head, pulling it down to hers. When their lips met, Blue felt the deepest satisfaction he'd ever known. This was exactly what he'd been dreaming of all these months, from the day he'd first set eyes on her, and it was more than worth the wait.

He might not be the ladies' man that Manolito was, or even Buck, but he'd kissed a fair few girls in his time. Inexperienced girls, who'd known as little of the process as he had himself; jaded and indifferent professionals, who left him feeling anxious and even a little guilty; girls who matched his youth and enthusiasm… Each one had been a different experience, and each experience was a world away from this.

Given her emotional confusion, he'd somehow expected Katie's kiss to be tentative, wounded, possibly even wet with tears. But it wasn't. This was not the kiss of a fragile, broken creature, but the kiss of a sensitive, loving woman, starved for affection for three long years. It was the kiss of a woman who had finally found what she'd been needing, and was at long last willing to accept it.

When they broke apart, they stood breathless and silent in each other's arms for a time, unable to do more than gaze into each other's eyes.

At length, Blue finally broke the silence. "You think I need to ask your father's permission to come courting you?"

She laughed. "I think it's probably safe to say you've had his permission since about the first day you came here."

"How about yours, then?"

"Oh, Blue, you have it," she breathed.

He let out a deep breath. "Okay, good," he said, and kissed her again.

* * *

Even with none of his family around to help mark the occasion, Blue's 31st birthday was the best he could remember. The three little boys showered him with attention, and parted with a few of their most prized trinkets as gifts. He could remember enough of what it was to be their age to recognise the generosity behind the thought, and thanked them accordingly. Katie – his wonderful Katie – made his favourite dinner, topped off with an enormous chocolate cake.

After dinner he insisted on helping her with the dishes, though that was really just an excuse to be alone with her. The whole process took about three times as long as it normally did, but they had a great deal of fun with it. Not infrequently, she would hand him a glass or a plate and then playfully refuse to let go of it. It didn't take him long to figure out that if he distracted her with a kiss, her hold on the dish would loosen and he could take it from her with no effort … if he remembered to do so.

Afterwards, with everything somehow dried and put away without incident, he stood by the head of the kitchen table, holding her in his arms. "You still taste of chocolate frosting," he murmured.

She kissed him again. "Mmm, how do you like your cake the best – the traditional way, or this?"

"Oh, this, definitely."

"Me, too."

They had been officially courting for almost three weeks now, and Blue was still having trouble believing his good fortune. After all the time he'd spent longing for her, being gently rebuffed or held at bay by the haunted look in her eyes, he couldn't help experiencing a giddy feeling every time he reached for her and found himself allowed to touch her, hold her, kiss her. She hadn't yet replied in kind when he told her that he loved her, but he saw it in her face every time she smiled at him. Every touch, every glance, every tender word told him how much she cared.

The boys, even at their age, couldn't help noticing the difference in their mother. They gave her puzzled looks every once in awhile but for the most part they shrugged it off, basking in her happiness without giving the source of it much thought. Once or twice, Blue urged her to tell her children that he was courting her, but she insisted they were too young to understand such a concept. Figuring she knew far more about it than he did, he accepted her word for it. Selfishly, he rather liked keeping it to themselves, anyway; there was a certain tang about a secret love-affair. Time enough later on to let everyone else in on it.

Of course, any time two people were so wrapped up in each other they barely noticed anything else, discretion was bound to be a little lacking. Discovery was inevitable.

That the inevitable should happen on the night of Blue's birthday was more an unfortunate coincidence than anything else, but he and Katie were unquestionably even less discreet that night than usual.

As they stood wrapped in one another's embrace in the kitchen, they were vaguely aware of the sound of conversation on the other side of the door but they paid no attention to anything that was said. If either of them had heard Adam and his grandfather planning a nighttime raid on the kitchen for another slice of chocolate cake, they would have had just enough time to move apart and compose themselves.

As it was, though, they were caught completely by surprise when the door opened. They sprang apart, both blushing furiously and looking as guilty as if they'd actually done something wrong.

Mason was the first to recover himself. With a smirk, he said, "'Scuse us. You two just … carry on doing what you were doing. Come on, son, we've had enough cake for one night."

He touched Adam's shoulder, urging him out of the doorway, but the boy didn't move. He stood staring, open-mouthed, from his mother to Blue and back again. At first his expression was merely surprised, but gradually the surprise gave way to anger and disgust at them both.

Katie reached out and touched his cheek gently with her fingertips. "Adam, darling," she began, but he didn't let her finish. Jerking away from her touch, he turned and stalked from the room. She looked helplessly at Blue and her father. "I should go and talk to him."

Blue, left alone with Mason, regarded his employer with some trepidation. He knew that fathers weren't generally kindly disposed towards young men who took advantage of their daughters, especially in the family home. But Mason, more amused than outraged, showed no inclination to fire him or order him from the house. Instead, he grinned and sat down to cut himself a huge slice of cake.

"Well, I'd say that cat's pretty thoroughly out of the bag, eh, Blue?"

"Uh huh." Blue sat down heavily. Belatedly, he remembered that Katie had always believed her father had been angling for something like this. He'd never been quite convinced of it before, but now he saw that she'd probably been right all along.

"Probably for the best. Secrets in families are usually a bad idea. Impractical, too. Six people living under one roof – bound to get out."

Blue nodded. "Yeah. I told her maybe she should tell 'em about it, but she said they're too young."

"Well, she thinks of them as babies still. Inclined to fuss over them a little too much. You've noticed that, I'm sure."

"Maybe she was right. The way Adam reacted there – I don't get what that was all about."

"Don't you?"

"No, not really."

Mason gave him a paternal look, affectionate but not without a touch of condescension. "You know, Adam thought the world of his father. They did everything together. Not quite six when William died. Old enough to remember him good, not old enough to separate the man from the hero."

"And he don't like the thought of me taking his place, is that it?"

"No, no. It's nothing like that," Mason said, waving his fork around as he talked. "It's not much to do with you at all. It's to do with Katie. See, when you're that age, parents are a matched set. One of each. You don't think about one without the other. And if something happens to one piece of that set, why, then, the other's just left as a single, unmatched piece. He wasn't expecting that to ever change."

Blue ignored the strained analogy and went straight for the heart of the matter. "Does he really expect her to be all alone for the rest of her life?"

"I doubt very seriously he's ever given it any thought at all."

"But Katie's still a young woman! Young, beautiful … she's got her whole life ahead of her."

There was a mischievous twinkle in Mason's blue eyes. "Well, Blue, you know that, and I know that, and thank heavens Katie's finally starting to realise it herself, but we're grown people. We know something about how the world works. Adam's eight years old. He _doesn't._ He doesn't think of her as a woman at all, young, beautiful, or anything else. She's just his mother. That's all he can see right now."

Blue sat there shaking his head. "I don't get it," he said flatly. "I just don't."

"Well, look at it this way," Mason told him. "I know you were much older than Adam when your mother died, but how well did you like it when your father started courting your stepmother?"

Blue remained silent. He wanted to say it was a different situation entirely, but he didn't feel like getting into the whole complicated story. Besides, he had a feeling that Mason would just wave away any objection. And maybe it _wasn't_ that different, anyway. After all, he had been badly thrown by it, and he'd been more than twice Adam's age. Not that the shoe was any more comfortable on the other foot; he thought ruefully that he probably owed Victoria a fair-sized apology next time he saw her.

Mason finished his hunk of cake. Wiping his mouth, he rose from the table and clapped Blue on the shoulder. "Don't worry about any of it," he said. "You might find things a little uncomfortable for the next few weeks, but he'll get over it soon enough."

* * *

The assessment was a little on the overly optimistic side, as it turned out. By the end of the year, Blue's relationship with the two older boys had gone from good to bad to worse. Adam grew increasingly sullen in his presence, and Andrew, desperate for his brother's approval, talked to Blue only a little, and only when he was sure Adam was nowhere nearby. Only Aaron, with the uncomplicated viewpoint of a three-year-old, took everything in his stride.

At first, Blue was terrified that Katie would end things with him, would tell him that she couldn't possibly consider a relationship that made her children so unhappy. After all, he knew that her sons meant more to her than anything else in the world. But in that, he underestimated just how much he himself had come to mean to her over the last few months. She fretted, watching every snub with worried, unhappy eyes, and she lost much of the vivaciousness that she had gained during those first uncomplicated days of their courtship. But most nights, after the boys had gone to bed, she crept into Blue's arms, finding solace in his embrace.

Over Christmas, something of an unofficial truce was declared. It would be an overstatement to say that things went back to the way they had been before, but there was a definite lessening of hostilities, at least temporarily. Blue, watching the light return to his beloved's eyes, breathed a sigh of relief.

If only he had known how his own family was faring over the season, he would have been perfectly content. He had received no reply to his long letter so far, though it had been mailed more than three months earlier. After the first of the year, he thought, he would write again.

And this time, he might just have some rather more exciting news to tell them.

* * *

Each New Year's Eve since the town was founded, there was a celebratory dance held in a specially cleared warehouse downtown.

Every family, every visitor, every traveller who happened through on the railroad on the last day of the year, was welcomed with open arms. Many of the attendees brought their own bottles, of course, though officially the only refreshment provided was fruit punch. Any enterprising fellow with an idea of spiking the punch quickly found his way barred by several of the more eagle-eyed upstanding citizens, and the gathering for the most part remained family friendly.

Katie, being a fairly popular young matron, was invited to dance by any number of men. Some were her father's age or older, but most were in their twenties and thirties. Somehow, she managed to accept just enough of the invitations to keep from seeming standoffish, but not enough for Blue to feel overly jealous.

In fact, to his surprise, he found that he was somewhat in demand as a partner himself. Young women he'd never even seen before tried desperately to catch his eye, doing anything they could think of to lure him over to ask them for a dance. He was introduced to more girls that night than he'd met since he left St. Louis.

They all had seemed to have one question for him: "Is it true that you and Mrs. Wheeler are engaged?"

"Not _exactly,"_ was his invariable reply. The blush that usually accompanied the answer did more to fan the flames of speculation than an outright confirmation would have done.

Of course, they danced more with each other than with anyone else, and it was always a relief to be back in one another's company. They spoke little, even when they were resting, but the silence was comforting to them both. There was no pressure to make small talk as there was with other partners.

At midnight, with no previous arrangement having been made, they managed to be together. It would have been unthinkable for either of them to be with anyone else at the big moment. They took part in the countdown, toasted the New Year, and kissed unashamedly in front of everyone. Few people noticed, of course, being busy with their own celebrations, but Blue and Katie wouldn't have cared if the entire town had been staring at them in shock.

Afterwards, they hurried back to the rest of the family. Mason had rounded up his sleepy grandsons and was getting ready to take them home. The two younger boys were barely awake, and Adam held his eyes wide open, trying without success to make everyone think that he wasn't sleepy in the least.

"I'll take the boys home in the wagon now," Mason told his daughter.

Katie nodded. "All right. I think it's long past time. I believe Blue and I will stay to the end. Shall we?" She turned to him with a questioning glance that was so appealing he couldn't have resisted if he'd been dead on his feet.

"I'd like to," he said. "We can walk home after the dance."

"You sure?" asked Mason. "Both been on your feet an awful lot tonight."

"We're sure, Dad," Katie said with a smile. She reached up and gave her father an affectionate kiss on the cheek, then bestowed a kiss on each of the boys. "Good night, boys. I'll see you in the morning."

They danced for another hour, then slipped outside for a breath of fresh air. It was a chilly night, and so clear that every star that had ever existed in the heavens seemed to be visible.

Not that Blue stood any chance of noticing something so unimportant as the vastness of the universe. Nothing in the world, or out of it, could have taken his eyes off Katie. In her white dress with the lace around the collar she seemed to him almost to reflect the starlight.

The dance was at least another hour away from breaking up, and miraculously there was no one around with the exception of a couple of horses. Taking advantage of the unexpected privacy, he drew her into his arms and kissed her, long and thoroughly. When they finally parted, he stood looking down at her, an expression of love and longing on his face.

"Katie," he said, "I think you know how much I love you. And I think you love me, too."

"Of course I do, Blue. I've probably always loved you. Right from that first morning when you gave me that ridiculous speech about my 'titian' hair. I've never been able to get you out of my mind since."

Blue heaved a sigh of relief. It was the first time she'd ever actually said the words. He'd known it for some time, of course, but actually hearing the words out loud was something else entirely.

And it made what he was about to say much, much easier.

"I want you to marry me," he whispered.

The sparkle of starlight in her eyes became the sparkle of tears instead, and for a moment she could only nod without speaking.

He looked at her nervously. "Yes?"

"Yes!" she confirmed.

With a whoop he couldn't have suppressed if his life had depended on it, he picked her up and whirled her around.

* * *

"I do realise this means living in Arizona eventually," she said as they walked home together arm in arm.

Blue was surprised she wanted to discuss it right now. He would have been perfectly happy to leave the grim realities well alone for another day or so, and just enjoy the perfect joy of the moment. But, if she wanted to talk about it, so be it.

"Yeah. Eventually. I'm sorry; I know how you feel about it, but that's—"

"That's your life, I know. That's what the future has mapped out for you."

Idly, he kicked at a rock on the road. "You know, it's more than that. It's my _home._ I don't think I'd actually wanna escape that future if I knew how."

Katie nodded, swallowed hard. "That's what I thought. You've been away from it all this time, and it still calls you back. It always will call you back."

"Yep. Funny, I don't think I ever had any idea how much I wanted it all till I went away. Before, it was always just sort of there, I guess. Just somethin' I didn't think much about. I don't guess that makes much sense, huh?"

"I think it does. You're saying that once you got a little perspective, that you realised that that ranch wasn't just your father's dream after all."

"Somethin' like that." They were silent for most of the rest of the journey. Finally, not more than a hundred yards from the house, Blue stopped and took hold of Katie's arm, turning her to face him. Searching her eyes intently, he asked, "Can you stand that?"

She gave him a tiny smile that he recognised as sheer bravado. "I'll have to, at some point. It frightens me to death, you know that, but the alternative frightens me a lot more." Blue grinned at her. He moved to kiss her again, but she held him off. "I need to ask one thing of you in exchange, though."

"Anything."

"Will you at least give me enough time to get used to the idea?"

"I'll give you all the time you need," he promised, without the slightest hesitation.

He didn't stop to think about it, or consider what that promise might mean. In all honesty, he didn't much care. He was mortgaging his future for her present; if it took years before she was ready, then he would wait years. Anything she needed, he would willingly give. Because that, to him, was better than the alternative.


End file.
